COMMENT: The post dealing with the mid-terms had this gem: “This is why all the Greek philosophers from Socrates to Plato were against democracy. It allowed a thin majority to become tyrannical.” What then is the alternative, for there will never come a time when we all agree about anything, let alone everything? The unstated alternative is that a minority becomes tyrannical and enforces their vision on everyone. Those are the two choices. There aren’t others just waiting to be discovered. Either the majority has it or the minority has it and as this is supposed to be a battle between ideas, the idea getting the most support should be the one chosen. Otherwise, candidates would try to lose the election so as that their plans would be enacted. Sorry, but that is just too stupid to be taken seriously by anyone with a still functioning brain in their head. As Churchill noted, “Democracy is the worst form of government there is, except for all the others.” And he was absolutely correct. If you don’t like what the majority is doing, change the minds of those who are persuadable; don’t bitch about not getting your way because your ideas were not popular. That is what infants do!
VK
REPLY: A friend invited me to dinner. There was another there who was a major programmer for Microsoft. He was a Biden supporter and convinced that climate change may have always existed, but we are the cause right now. There are people among the Democrats who have just been brainwashed with sophistry. If they were not being mentally manipulated by a small group of elites with an agenda they would never agree with if the truth were told, then there would be perhaps a more reasonable world.
Then you have egos. Trump felt his endorsing power was not what he and others thought it was. So he told the WSJ he knew some dit on DeSantis. This is the problem. Trump was on the right track and he was what the people rallied behind – term limits and draining the swamp. But now his personal ego is surfacing and that becomes a problem in politics. It is hard to resist when everyone says you control the power.
The best form of government I have ever seen was that of Genoa where the Doge (president) rotated annually amount the wealthy families. This was before Marxism. There was no social warfare. They ran Genoa more like a company competing against Venice and Florence. Because the Doge rotated, nobody would pass a law that was draconian since they would have to live under that law the following years and it would be more than a decade before the wheel would return to their family.
Marxist Socialism has been highly destructive. It has begun the division that undermines the purpose of civilization – that we all come together because we all benefit. When one group targets another, that is it. You begin the process of economic suicide. The Democrats no longer know how to run for office without promising to rob one group for the benefit of another.
Republics are always the worst form of government because they can be bribed. Look at the bankers. They have blown up the world economy countless times and NEVER has a single banker ever been charged. They own the SEC and CFTC – the case is closed for they will never be held accountable – EVER!
I tried to warn the Republicans, but they too want to hear what they prefer to believe. I warned them that they would NOT be able to reverse what Biden has set in motion.
Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Nancy Pelosi are of no use to the Left in the midterms because it is their radical ideology that was finally enacted and wrecked the country…
Over the last few months the four icons of the Democratic Party—Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Nancy Pelosi—have hit the campaign trail.
They’ve weighed in on everything from “right-wing violence” and “election denialists” to the now tired “un-American” semi-fascist MAGA voter—and had nothing much to say about inflation, the border, crime, energy, or the Afghanistan debacle. In this, they remind us just how impoverished and calcified is this left-wing pantheon.
So why should we take anything they say seriously, given their own records—and especially given their mastery of projecting their own shortcomings upon others as some sort of private exculpation or preemptive political strategy?
Still Hopin’ and Changin’?
Barack Obama this past week has assumed the role of surrogate president. He is storming the country, while Joe Biden mopes at home or visits shrinking blue enclaves so he can claim post facto, “At least I was out there stumping.”
Over the last six years, we have become accustomed to Obama’s periodic getaways from one of his three estates. It is always the same. From time to time, he reenters politics to remind us that he did not just cash in on his presidency to become a multi-millionaire. Instead, he is still the Chicago “community activist” of his youth. And so, Obama will not be overshadowed by the Biden crew that is enacting all the crazy things he as president had warned were a bit much even for him.
At the funeral of the late John Lewis, Obama turned his eulogy into a political rant. He weighed in on the “racist” filibuster, the “Jim Crow relic” that he desperately sought in vain to use to stop the appointment of Justice Samuel Alito.
At campaign stops, he deplores “divisions” that he, more than any modern figure, helped create. The entire left-wing vocabulary of disparagement for the white lower-working classes (e.g., deplorables, dregs, chumps, irredeemables, etc.) got its start with Obama’s putdown of Pennsylvania voters who rejected him in the 2008 primaries as “clingers.”
In interviews, Obama suddenly now blasts harsh rhetoric—this from the wannabe tough guy who stole the “The Untouchables” line about bringing a knife to a gun fight. Well before crazy Maxine Waters’ calls to arms, Obama advised his supporters “get in their faces.”
Still, on the campaign trail, Obama appears not so much animated as stale. It is as if he has been suddenly stirred from a long coma that commenced in 2008. It’s the same old, same old—sleeves rolled up. He still resorts to the scripted outbursts of mock anger. And the nerdy prep school graduate still amateurishly modulates his patois—now policy wonk, now breaking into the Southern African-American pastor accent when an audience needs more preachy authenticity.
He still tries to rev up his crowds with the familiar attacks: Republican demons will cut Social Security, the MAGA semi-fascists are captives of Donald Trump (as if the Democrats have not ceded their souls to woke hysterics), the Republican fanatics will all but kill women by denying abortions, and extremists unlike himself are dividing the country.
On and on, Obama shouts about social justice. And then he wraps up and must decide to which of his mansions he will fly home (via private jet)—Kalorama, Martha’s Vineyard, Hyde Park, or soon the Waimanalo estate.
Obama offers no solutions much less hints at his own culpability in his sermons. There is nothing about the open border he helped birth. Nothing about Biden’s failed energy policies now bankrupting the middle class that were simply a reification of his energy secretary Steven Chu’s perverse wishes for European-priced gas (“Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.”).
Nothing is said about the Skip Gates psychodrama and his blanket stereotyped attack on police, the tossing of his own grandmother under the racial bus, the Trayvon Martin racial editorialization, the Ferguson mythologies, and all his efforts to create a binary nation of oppressors and oppressed, as Obama himself determined who is the victim, who the victimizer.
Drew Angerer/Getty Images
The Role Model Pelosi
After the terrible attack on her husband, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s colleagues are rightly calling for an end to extremist rhetoric. If we are to follow the Democratic clarion call, what might Pelosi herself do to help us to lower the temperature?
Here are a few modest suggestions.
Contrary to press reports, conservatives deplored the attack on Paul Pelosi. They want his attacker behind bars with no bail until his trial date. And if convicted they wish him to serve a long sentence before parole is even considered. Let us dish out a proper punishment to David DePape; one that can serve as a model to all such thugs who do his kind of devilish work daily against the innocent and weak—but unlike him, are usually exempt from punishment.
Recall that DePape should never have been in the United States. He is an illegal alien who violated his visa and should have had a warrant out for deportation, especially given his prior history of lawlessness. Would that the illegal alien who murdered innocent San Franciscan Kate Steinle had been subject to the likely punishment that now is awaiting DePape.
So yes, we all must lower the temperature. As speaker of the House, Pelosi can do her part in quieting passions, given half the country are her fellow Americans who do not live in the darkness of lies. She might ask Joe Biden to quit calling them semi-fascists and un-American.
Pelosi herself should never again tear up her copy of the state of the union address on national television. In that congressional forum she was attacking the presidency, not just Donald Trump. Half the voters feel as strongly about Joe Biden as she does about Donald Trump. If, as House speaker, Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) were to follow Pelosi’s precedent and rip up the next Biden State of the Union, would Pelosi find that continuation of her precedent conducive to healing the nation’s wounds?
Pelosi herself should not use any more violent imagery in expressing her anger at a president of the opposite party, much less threaten to use physical violence.
When she was asked to clarify what she meant in screaming about Trump (“I hope he comes. I want to punch him out. . . . I’ve been waiting for this . . . I’m going to punch him out, and I’m going to go to jail, and I’m going to be happy.”), she scoffed that she could not follow up on her threat only because Trump would never come to Congress to give her the opportunity.
Whatever one thinks of Trump, Pelosi only lowers the bar when she boasts about feloniously striking a president of the United States.
That Joe Biden had boasted twice about taking Trump behind the gym to beat him up, and others such as actor Robert DeNiro have echoed such threats (“I’d like to punch him in the face”) was no excuse for her reckless talk. After 2016 it was hard to calibrate all the ways the leftists had shouted ways of slaying Donald Trump—by stabbing, shooting, incineration, or decapitation.
Pelosi should never again delay legislation aimed at protecting Supreme Court justices from the sort of violence that occurred when Justice Brett Kavanaugh was run out of a restaurant, or anti-abortion protesters swarmed his home, or a would-be assassin showed up at his house.
Why was Pelosi so fearful about expediting such added security? Would prompt action have empowered the factual narrative that the chief threat to Supreme Court justices now arises from radical abortion protestors?
Pelosi might have reminded Democrats to tone down their rhetoric after the near-fatal shooting of Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.). After all, the shooter was a highly political, left-wing activist and former Bernie Sanders’ volunteer. But she did no such thing.
She could have privately reprimanded her own daughter that it was not a funny thing to cheer on the violent attack against Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who suffered broken ribs, a collapsed lung, pneumonia, and had to undergo pulmonary surgery.
When the younger Pelosi used her family name to gain traction by tweeting “Rand Paul’s neighbor was right,” (if she had used her married last name would anyone have read it?), it sent the message that there was a sort of happiness on the Left that a political opponent had been a target of violence. The Left is furious at Donald Trump, Jr. for crudely mocking the Pelosi assault, but he unfortunately followed a precedent long set by others.
Kyle Mazza/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
She’s Back!
Hillary Clinton is occasionally asked to weigh in on the midterm campaigns, but never in a swing state or hotly contested race. Her presence, like that of Joe Biden’s, would immediately lose the endorser a critical 1-2 points.
Clinton recently warned that the 2024 election likely will be illegitimate due to Republican instigated “voter fraud.”
Her outburst can be translated into something like, “The midterm left-wing wipeout may be just a preliminary to a 2024 Democratic disaster.” Hillary preempted Biden who, in his third and latest McCarthyite speech, warned that the “Mega Maga” people are planning devilry years in advance and so, like Hillary, he can now cast doubt on the legitimacy of future elections the Democrats will lose.
In truth, no one has done more in the last century to impugn the integrity of U.S. elections than Hillary Clinton. She has questioned the 2016, 2020, and 2024 elections, on the theory that any election Democrats might lose is an “attack on democracy.”
Her sins go way beyond feloniously destroying subpoenaed emails and devices or leveraging her New York senatorial run by Bill Clinton’s presidential pardons or using her office to enrich her family’s foundation as in the case of Uranium One.
When we return to sane times, historians will assess her 2016 efforts to destroy her opponent, his transition, and his presidency as the greatest election scandal in modern memory. She used three paywalls to hide her efforts to hire foreign national Christopher Steele (who was simultaneously working with the FBI).
On spec, she used her own contacts such as Charles Dolan to fabricate a phony hit dossier against her opponent and then to seed it within the media and the Obama bureaucracy to smear Trump.
Not content with that failed and likely illegal effort, she then declared the duly elected president illegitimate and the 2016 election all but stolen.
Her Hollywood friends cut videos begging electors to renounce their constitutional duties, ignore their state tallies, and vote instead for Hillary. Had they gotten their way, the entire federal election system as we know it would have been destroyed.
Then her surrogate, Green Party candidate Jill Stein, sued to overturn the election. Clinton bragged of joining #TheResistance in mock-heroic terms. As an arch-denialist, she urged Joe Biden under no circumstances to concede to Trump if he lost the 2020 vote.
And now she warns us of others who might emulate her own denialism?
What does Hillary fear in 2024? That a Trump or DeSantis will hire a Steele-like fraud to fabricate Democrat-Chinese collusion and smear a Democrat nominee? That the loser will not concede as she once urged, or the winner is illegitimate as she once insisted?
Good Old Joe Is Just Old Joe
Instead of a list of supposed communists, Joe Biden apparently has a roster of “election denialists” who he says are running for Senate and Congress and whom he fears will win next Tuesday. And he sets the example for others like House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.)—himself a 2004-05 election denialist—who now smears his opponents as Nazis who, he fears, by democratically voting Democrats out of office nationwide will “destroy democracy.”
What will Biden not lie about? The death of his son, the circumstances in which his first wife died in a car wreck, the fantasy congressional vote on his student-loan forgiveness scheme? The number of states (Joe says, 54, Obama used to swear there are 57)? The very century we are now in? Where he went to college?
Joe, our own Walter Mitty, has variously been a semi-truck driver, an arrested South-African street protestor against apartheid, a surrogate Puerto-Rican child, a black college enrollee, a Ciceronian populist orator, a coal miner’s scion, an honors student, a blue-chip collegiate athlete, a defender against inner-city Corn Poppers, and absolutely ignorant about the Biden family syndicate.
Recall that a non compos mentis Biden was nominated solely as the thin veneer to a hard Left agenda whose avatars were unelectable. Biden was to feign being the colorless, stand-in “moderate” who would “unify” the fractured country, tone down the Trump rhetoric, and let the Trump record sort of proceed on autopilot.
Then when he played out that part and won, the leftist minders in this Faustian bargain took over to push through, on a one-vote senatorial margin, the most radical left-wing agenda in U.S. history.
Biden, however, took his role too seriously. He reverted to the mean-spirited, pre-senile blowhard Joe—the obnoxious messenger thus now making the noxious message even more toxic.
A retiring, silenced, good old Joe from Scranton was the script, not a doddering, incoherent, ”get off my lawn” old man shouting for the need of socialist policies that were the exact opposite of his previously supposed convictions.
The Left got their Biden. And yes, he turned over the reins of government to them. And yes, they got their neo-socialism for two years. And yes, they are destroying America as we knew it. But in doing this, the people had the rare occasion to see fully and experience the nihilist Left. And they are now about to express their loathing for what the Left has wrought.
The problem with the ossified Democratic Pantheon is that they are of no use to the Left in the midterms because it is their own radical ideology over the past two years that was finally enacted and wrecked the country. And all the shrieks about abortion, semi-fascists, and democracy dying cannot put back together what they shattered.
Remember when America was energy independent? Gas was under $2 per gallon, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve was full, and our lawmakers did not have to grovel at the feet of our adversaries who are declining to help us anyway. The only reason America has an energy crisis is because Joe Biden eliminated domestic energy efforts on his first day of office. Now, he is assuring voters that the Biden Administration will keep energy prices inflated.
“No more drilling,” Biden said to a climate change protestor while campaigning for New York Governor Kathy Hochul. “There is no more drilling. I haven’t formed any new drilling,” Biden stated. When questioned about offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, Biden said he planned to eliminate that project as it began before he took office.
A few days earlier, Biden promised to destroy America’s coal sector. Biden touted that wind and solar technology is cheaper, as he clearly does not realize they cannot replace coal at this time. “So it’s going to become a wind generation. And all they’re doing is it’s going to save them a hell of a lot of money, and using the same transmission line that they transmitted the coal-fired electric on,we’re going to be shutting these plants down all across America,” the president stated.
Biden is suggesting that coal miners simply become computer programmers. “Anybody who can go down 300-3,000 feet in a mine sure as hell can learn how to program as well,” Biden said at a campaign event. “But we don’t think of it that way. Anybody who can throw coal into furnace can learn how to program, for God’s sake.” The war on fossil fuels will continue under the Democrats.
At the World Economic Conference in 2021, the Armstrong Socrates model predicted that 2022 was going to be volatile and chaotic featuring a strong US dollar, a huge move in interest rates, a major bond market decline, fertilizer and food shortages, as well as escalating geopolitical tensions in Ukraine.
What now? Socrates forecast that 2023 will be more volatile and chaotic, featuring violent moves across all markets as monetary and geopolitical tensions and debt problems intensify.
At this year’s World Economic Conference, November 11-13, Martin Armstrong will talk about what’s next for the US dollar and other currencies, the liquidity/credit crisis, as well as price targets for oil, gold, stocks, bonds/interest rates, and stocks.
Biden’s IRS army of 87,000 new armed recruits is coming under fire by the Republican party. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Sen. Jon Thune (R-SD) are working on a bill that would require Congress to approve IRS spending. Both men also sit on the House-Senate Joint Committee on Taxation. Biden would like to spend $80 billion on his IRS army over the next decade to shake down American taxpayers.
“Our bill will ensure that the IRS is answerable to the American people in how it uses this money and will force it to forfeit funds every day it’s not in compliance,” Grassley said. “If our bill becomes law, the Biden administration’s IRS would have to answer to the American people, not Washington bureaucrats,” Thune added. The American people fund the IRS, and it is only right that they vote on how their money is spent. In fact, they should vote on whether there is a need for the IRS at all.
If the bill passes, the IRS must explain how they use their money every year. Funding to the IRS would be withheld if they failed to comply. If Congress turns red this November, this measure is likely to pass. This would be a great first step in a long overdue overhaul of the entire US tax system, which is designed to be as complex as possible so that the government can squeeze funds out of every citizen.
November Posted originally on the conservative tree house on 7, 2022 | Sundance
In foreign countries when the ruling government sends federal police or military agents of the regime in power to “monitor elections,” U.S. politicians and media call it intimidation, corruption and election fraud. When Joe Biden sends federal police to monitor elections, U.S. politicians and media call it “protecting democracy.” The process is identical.
Comrades, earlier today the political branch of the Dept of Justice announced their dispatch to key Democrat cities and counties in order to support the correct regime voting process. No, really, they did. [LINK]
(DOJ) – The Justice Department announced today its plans to monitor compliance with federal voting rights laws in 64 jurisdictions in 24 states for the Nov. 8, 2022 general election. Since the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the Civil Rights Division has regularly monitored elections in the field in jurisdictions around the country to protect the rights of voters. The Civil Rights Division will also take complaints from the public nationwide regarding possible violations of the federal voting rights laws through its call center. The Civil Rights Division enforces the federal voting rights laws that protect the rights of all citizens to access the ballot.
For the general election, the Civil Rights Division will monitor for compliance with the federal voting rights laws on Election Day and/or in early voting in 64 jurisdictions:
City of Bethel, Alaska;
Dillingham Census Area, Alaska;
Kusilvak Census Area, Alaska;
Sitka City-Borough, Alaska;
Maricopa County, Arizona;
Navajo County, Arizona;
Pima County, Arizona;
Pinal County, Arizona;
Yavapai County, Arizona;
Newton County, Arkansas;
Los Angeles County, California;
Sonoma County, California;
Broward County, Florida;
Miami-Dade County, Florida;
Palm Beach County, Florida;
Cobb County, Georgia;
Fulton County, Georgia;
Gwinnett County, Georgia;
Town of Clinton, Massachusetts;
City of Everett, Massachusetts;
City of Fitchburg, Massachusetts;
City of Leominster, Massachusetts;
City of Malden, Massachusetts;
City of Methuen, Massachusetts;
City of Randolph, Massachusetts;
City of Salem, Massachusetts;
Prince George’s County, Maryland;
City of Detroit, Michigan;
City of Flint, Michigan;
City of Grand Rapids, Michigan;
City of Pontiac, Michigan;
City of Southfield, Michigan;
City of Minneapolis, Minnesota;
Hennepin County, Minnesota;
Ramsey County, Minnesota;
Cole County, Missouri;
Alamance County, North Carolina;
Columbus County, North Carolina;
Harnett County, North Carolina;
Mecklenburg County, North Carolina;
Wayne County, North Carolina;
Middlesex County, New Jersey;
Bernalillo County, New Mexico;
San Juan County, New Mexico;
Clark County, Nevada;
Washoe County, Nevada;
Queens County, New York;
Cuyahoga County, Ohio;
Berks County, Pennsylvania;
Centre County, Pennsylvania;
Lehigh County, Pennsylvania;
Luzerne County, Pennsylvania;
Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania;
City of Pawtucket, Rhode Island;
Horry County, South Carolina;
Dallas County, Texas;
Harris County, Texas;
Waller County, Texas;
San Juan County, Utah;
City of Manassas, Virginia;
City of Manassas Park, Virginia;
Prince William County, Virginia;
City of Milwaukee, Wisconsin; and,
City of Racine, Wisconsin.
Monitors will include personnel from the Civil Rights Division and from U.S. Attorneys’ Offices. In addition, the division also deploys monitors from the Office of Personnel Management, where authorized by federal court order. Division personnel will also maintain contact with state and local election officials.
The Civil Rights Division’s Voting Section enforces the civil provisions of federal statutes that protect the right to vote, including the Voting Rights Act, the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act, the National Voter Registration Act, the Help America Vote Act and the Civil Rights Acts. The division’s Disability Rights Section enforces the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) to ensure that persons with disabilities have a full and equal opportunity to vote. The division’s Criminal Section enforces federal criminal statutes that prohibit voter intimidation and voter suppression based on race, color, national origin or religion. (read more)
Now, imagine the media apoplexy if President Trump’s DOJ was activated to Philadelphia (PA), Baltimore (MD), Atlanta (GA), Clark County (NV), Wayne County (MI), Broward County (FL), Harris County (TX) and Racine (WI)?
Overlay the areas from the DOJ announcement with the blue vote spikes on the map below…. Notice something?
Posted originally on the conservative tree house on November 7, 2022 | sundance
At 10:22am today, billionaire businessman and new Owner/CEO of Twitter, Elon Musk, has recommended that voters choose republican candidates for congress this midterm election cycle. [Source]
Democrats and left-wing political activist groups are going bananas.
The corrupt celebrity Oprah Winfrey (a separate blog post for another day) and her old posse are weighing in on the Pennsylvania Senate race. John Fetterman v Mehmet Oz is quite an odd pairing. Dr. Oz rose to fame through his appearances on Oprah’s daytime show. Yet, Oprah publicly will not support the Republican candidate.
Oprah went as far as arranging an online Zoom event to mobilize PA voters. “There are clear choices out there … to represent the values — this is what we’re talking about — the values we hold dear,” she said on the Zoom presentation. “The values of inclusion, the values of compassion … that so many of us share, so use your discernment,” Oprah word vomited. These are the age-old keywords with no clear definition, such as “values,” “inclusion,” and “compassion.” Why would she promote Dr. Oz on her show as the top medical advisor for years if she felt he was lacking in these values?
Knowing Oprah is a die-hard Democrat, Oz was not surprised. “Doctor Oz loves Oprah and respects the fact that they have different politics. He believes we need more balance and less extremism in Washington,” a member of his campaign said.
Yet, another “doctor” who Oprah rose to fame believes John Fetterman is not mentally competent to hold office. Dr. Phil McGraw, albeit no longer a doctor, appeared on “The Joe Rogan Experience” to discuss his concerns with the candidate. “Just ask yourself,” Dr. Phil added, “Let’s say you were getting on an airplane and the airline pilot had had a similar cognitive impairment. Would you get on? Well, hell no.” After seeing Fetterman struggle to form a coherent sentence during his debate, I would NEVER board an airplane with Fetterman onboard, even if he was a flight attendant.
Dr. Phil said that he did not want to appear “unkind” and said Fetterman had “courage,” but this man clearly is mentally compromised. Joe Rogan called this an example of the media and politicians gaslighting the public. Both men said it was unfair to put Fetterman in this position. There is a long list of violent offenders and murderers in prison waiting for a Fetterman win to be released back into the population. If he were running on a Republican ticket, the media would have turned on him during his first interview, and he would not be viewed as the next savior of Pennsylvania.
Posted originally on the conservative tree house on November 6, 2022 | Sundance
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Facebook’s parent company, Meta, is planning to lay off people after the midterm election next week. Meta has lost 70% of its stock value after announcing poor user engagement and financial support last week while investors fled to the exits.
In the big picture, those companies who were ideologically aligned with the Biden administration’s larger political efforts will all likely start announcing layoffs soon. There’s a better than reasonable likelihood some companies have deferred layoff announcements in an effort to help the employment stats for the Biden Administration.
(Via Wall Street Journal) – […] The layoffs are expected to affect many thousands of employees and an announcement is planned to come as soon as Wednesday, according to the people. Meta reported more than 87,000 employees at the end of September. Company officials already told employees to cancel nonessential travel beginning this week, the people said.
The planned layoffs would be the first broad head-count reductions to occur in the company’s 18-year history. While smaller on a percentage basis than the cuts at Twitter Inc. this past week, which hit about half of that company’s staff, the number of Meta employees expected to lose their jobs could be the largest to date at a major technology corporation in a year that has seen a tech-industry retrenchment.
The cuts expected to be announced this week follow several months of more targeted staffing reductions in which employees were managed out or saw their roles eliminated.
“Realistically, there are probably a bunch of people at the company who shouldn’t be here,” Mr. Zuckerberg told employees at a companywide meeting at the end of June. (read more)
Posted originally on the conservative November 6, 2022 | Sundance
The media pearl-clutching over changes to the Twitter social media platform has become detached from reality. During a Face the Nation discussion today, a very serious Margaret Brennan and Kris Krebs, former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) outline the national security risks created by Elon Musk’s change to the “verified Twitter user” system. The “blue checks.”
Mr Krebs outlined how bad actors from Russia, Iran and China could potentially write mean words on Twitter and create social collapse in the United States as a result of election interference, defined as misinformation and disinformation. Additionally, the unified western military order is at risk from the national security threat posed by allowing random unmonitored discussion on a social media platform. With the midterm election this week, people could die if Elon Musk removes the control filters on the global conversation. WATCH:
[Transcript] – […] BRENNAN: We return to our conversation now about election security with CBS News, cybersecurity expert and analyst Chris Krebs. Chris, I want to talk about something that’s happening right now. Social media has already changed the way we communicate and, certainly, our political world. President Biden said a few days ago that he has concerns about billionaire Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter- said, “the platform spews lies all across the world. There’s no editors anymore in America, there are no editors, how do we expect kids to be able to understand what is at stake?” It’s not just kids, right? What concerns do you have about this happening just days before the election, these changes to Twitter?
KREBS: Well, I think I think the government for one has a mechanism by which they can review the acquisition, the Committee for Foreign Investment in the United States can take a look at particularly the second and third ownership positions in Twitter, including Saudi Arabia. That is something that I’m assuming that the Treasury Department is taking a look at right now to see if they can put in place a national security agreement or even potentially unwind the purchase. But I think more specifically to what’s happening right now with Twitter, I think there are kind of- there are two “Elons” that we are seeing. There’s the public Elon, that’s, you know, trolling and saying $8, please, on all the complaints about some of the shifts in the moderation and other activities. Then there’s what’s happening behind the scenes, the conversations with the civil rights groups, with advertisers, with the teens, which perhaps maybe a little bit more stable. And I think if you look at the platform itself right now, not a whole lot has changed. That may not be a popular opinion, but I think the reality is that most, you haven’t seen too much of a change in the moderation. Now, the concern, though, is what happens tomorrow, where you can buy the blue tick for $8 a month, Twitter Blue–
MARGARET BRENNAN: For our viewers who don’t use Twitter, a blue check is a sign of credibility.
KREBS: It has historically been a marker of trust, and that Twitter has said, we’ve confirmed and authenticated the identity of this person, which tends to be a politician, or a news media personality or a journalist, an academic or someone that may be a popular voice in certain civil rights, civil liberties issue.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Now you can buy it for eight bucks a month.
KREBS: Along with a number of other features of editing and longer-form video posting. But again, to have such a dramatic shift in that marker of trust, now you can buy it, in advance of as we’ve been talking about a very contentious and important election. It opens the information space to a broader community of influencers, clout chasers, election denialists–
MARGARET BRENNAN: Foreign actors?
KREBS: Absolutely, I mean, we’ve seen reports lately of Russia, China and Iran, back at their old tricks, and it is going to create a very chaotic environment.
MARGARET BRENNAN: To that point in- in 2018, during the midterms, [U.S] Cyber Command took offensive operations to take out Russian trolls who are spreading misinformation. The New York Times has a story today saying Russia is back at it. What does that say to you about U.S. defenses?
KREBS: Well, I think so Recorded Future and Graphika, two research firms have released information that Russian bots, trolls, associated with the Internet Research Agency, which is a group that targeted since the 2016 and the 2018 election, are back at it and are undermining this time Democratic candidates for Senate in some of the- the more contentious races. I think what it says is that the- there’s a broader community of actors, they recognize that political discourse is very divisive here in the US, and they have more opportunities, probably than ever before, to continue to undermine confidence to create chaos, which is really, their primary objective here. It’s not necessarily that a winner wins, but that we’ve all lost- lost confidence and they degrade the American democracy experiment.
MARGARET BRENNAN: There are also a number of sitting Senators, and of note, Ambassador Richard Grinnell former President Trump’s Acting Director of National Intelligence has been posting some misleading information, that’s him on the screen, about the election. He said, “any state which doesn’t count all the votes and announce the winner Tuesday night is incompetent.”–
KREBS: So all 50 states then, by that formulation,
MARGARET BRENNAN: Because what you’re saying is just the fact that votes are never finalized on election night. But why do you think someone who knows better is posting something like that?
KREBS: Well, whether he knows better, I can’t assume that, but the point here is that it’s for clout chasing, it’s for influence. There’s a reward system and structure set up right now within the far-right of the GOP that provides additional engagement. So, you tweet something like that, and you can see your likes, your retweets, your amplification really take off. And if you’re just talking about some other, you know, more mundane domestic issue, nobody cares. But there’s a reward system and incentive structure that’s set up where exactly this sort of messaging is- is rewarded. It’s encouraged, and, and this is again, going back to Governor Sununu’s comments, we need leaders to lead. We need the presumptive leaders of the Republican Party to stand up and say this is unacceptable, this is not how it works. We need to be good faith actors in this process and unfortunately, leaders aren’t leading right now.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Chris Krebs, thank you as always for your analysis and we will see you on election night as part of CBS coverage at our democracy desk here at CBS News. (LINK)
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