Everything proceeded as I had foreseen.
I wish I’d been wrong.
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Category Archives: Main Stream Media
Yelling, “Theatre!” at a Crowded Fire
At a crowded dumpster fire to be more specific, and by “dumpster fire” I mean the leftwing precincts of Twitter.
One of my pet First Amendment peeves is the misuse of a misquotation from line by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., found in the now overturned Schenck v. U.S. Supreme Court decision—
The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic …
Emphassis added. Schenck upheld the Democrats use of the Sedition Act of 1918 to suppress speech opposing the Wilson Administration’s use of the draft in WW1. The First Amendment holding in Schenck was overturned in 1969 in Brandenburg v. Ohio. The Supreme Court held in that case
[T]the constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not permit a State to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.
The Brandenburg test is the current Supreme Court jurisprudence on the ability of government to punish speech after it occurs.
Yelling, “Fire!” (whether or not there really is a fire) isn’t illegal per se. Of course, it may be immoral if yelling it causes a panic, and if someone were injured or killed as a result of such a false warning, the yeller could be held civilly and criminally liable for his action.
But back to Twitter.
I find the dramatic whinging over the dumpster fire resulting from the self-inflicted ToS suspensions of leftwing journalists to be really boring theatre.
WaPo Announces Layoffs Are Coming
Democracy Dies in Derpness™
So does economic viability.
Learn to Weld
CNN has announced a round of layoffs. My podcasting partner Stacy McCain reports it’s a “mostly peaceful” end for the journalism careers of a lot of deadwood on the payroll.
Given the number of alleged programmers recently dumped on the market, learning to code may not be a useful addition to an unemployed journalist’s skill set.
I’m Not Making This Up, You Know
She was obviously making it up as she went along …
… and clearly demonstrating that she’s a Constitution denier.
Or does she think that 38 states would vote to repeal the 26th Amendment? Or amend Article 1, Section 2, which sets the minimum age for a Member of the House of Representatives at 25?
Fact Checking a Fact Chekist
Kessler is wrong on two points. First, the muscles which will grow to form the heart begin their rhythmic contractions (i.e., beating) around 22 days after conception.
Second, ultrasound systems detect sound not electrical activity.
Democracy Dies in Derpness™
FIFY
Quote of the Day
The narrow bandwidth of TV has made us think that we are stupider than we are.
—Jordan Peterson
WaPo and It’s Mean Girls
There’s no telling how long the mean girls drama will keep going at WaPo. You can use this link to stock up on popcorn.
Democracy Dies in Derpness™
Taylor Lorenz has a “scoop” over at WaPo reporting the Disinformation Governance Board (ДГБ) is being “paused,” and that Disinformation Tsarina Jankowicz in considering resigning from the Department of Homeland Security. When I tried to retweet (with a comment) Lorenz’s tweet, Twitter posted this:
However, her tweet is available. I screen capped this after my tweet was posted:
Gentle Reader, it would appear that Twitter is engaging in disinformation.
Hmmm.
Correlation Is Not Causation, But …
Dominion Voting Systems was unavailable for comment.
I’m So Old …
… I remember seeing pretty women on the cover of Sports Illustrated‘s swimsuit issue.
Quote of the Day
The New York Times editorial page is like a Ouija board that has only three answers, no matter what the question. The answers are: higher taxes, more restrictions on political speech and stricter gun control.
—Ann Coulter
Much Is Proceeding As I Have Foreseen
As I expected, a substantial chunk of the Main Stream Media is not taking Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter very well. This is particularly true of folks at media companies owned by billionaires such as WaPo.
This headline from the NYT probably sums up the Main Stream Media’s reaction—Twitter Under Elon Musk Will Be a Scary Place.
Indeed, it likely would be scary for them to have to compete with uncensored reporting of Facts that contradict The Narrative.
That’s what Elon Musk is promising, but the deal hasn’t finally closed, and we haven’t seen how much change will come or how quickly.
Meanwhile, I’m looking forward to those changes, and I will wait to see them before I make changes of my own. Come back around midnight to read a bit more.
Learning to Code
As CNN+ bites the dust, …
Of course, they can always learn to code. I learned Fortran when I was a teenager and several other programming languages since then. These days, most coding is done with a keyboard, but I’ve found another tool useful for some forms of communication.
OK, at least one of the Gentle Readers is going point out that manual telegraphy is as slow, essentially obsolete form of communications. That’s true, but Morse code still can deliver truthful information faster than CNN+ ever has. That’s why it will still be in use next month.
Everything Is Receding As I Have Foreseen
As my podcasting partner Stacy McCain has noted, Netflix shares are down over 60 % so far this year.
And now, Warner’s is pulling the plug on CNN+.
UPDATE—Disney stock has set a 52-week low.
Concerning Anonymity
Hogewash! isn’t an anonymous blog. When I started blogging in 2011, I had a discussion with the late Mrs. Hoge about whether the blog should be anonymous. I wasn’t looking for controversy, but I didn’t want her involuntarily sucked into any unpleasantness that might come along. She thought that I should blog using my real name. She even suggest the blog’s name, one that’s pretty hard for me to use anonymously, and she never expressed any regret for her advice.
If you click on the DMCA Contact tab in the menu, you can find my home address and cell phone number. I’m undoxable.
I do have some noms de cyber—for example, I’m @JohnnyAtsign on Twitter—but the vast bulk of my Internet scribblings are openly tagged with my real name.
OTOH, I understand not everyone can safely be as open as I can, so I allow anonymous comments here so long as they don’t involve the use of someone else’s identity and meet the other requirements laid out in The Fine Print.
The recent doxxing of @libsoftiktok by Taylor Lorenz and WaPo was pure cyberthuggery, and the flat out lying about having posted their victim’s personal information is shameful.
But I doubt they feel any shame. Oh, I’m sure they’re displeased with being ratioed on Twitter when they tried to first defend and then deny the doxxing. Discomfort, yes. Shame, no. Next, they’ll move on to claiming that they’re the victims and go on to more thuggery.
Democracy Dies in Derpness™
Well, That’s Interesting
A hot project at work kept me away from the Interwebz all day. I missed Elon Musk’s offer to buy Twitter and the ensuing panic that a billionaire might take control of a means of mass communication. I found this oped … um … interesting.
I wonder what Jeff Bezos, the owner of WaPo, thinks about billionaire ownership of mass media. Actually, I don’t wonder at all about how he feels.
Democracy Dies in Derpness™.
The Narrative Has Changed …
… and WaPo has got the message. They’ve joined in reporting more or less truthfully on Hunter’s laptop. So have CNN, Politico, The Hill, and NBC News.
Hmmmmm.
How to Know You’re No Longer an A-Team Player
Isikoff says he didn’t see this coming.
That implies that he’s no longer on the inside of the Media Deep State Complex.
It’s clear the reason a grand jury has been kept in business investigating Hunter Biden is to provide an indictment if The Big Guy becomes too much of a liability. Given the failures over the past 15 months, it’s not surprising that the battle space is being prepared for a change.
Hmmmm.
THE Narrative Is As Changeable As THE Science
The New York Times is reporting that Hunter’s laptop isn’t Russian disinformation after all.
However, Twitter Safety was provided with the Narrative Change Notice in advance, and there is no indication that the NYT will be banned as the NYPost was in 2020.
The Usual Suspects
This has turned up on Teh Twitterz—
The Gentle Reader may remember that Ms. Chalupa is a Democrat operative who worked with her contacts in the previous Ukrainian regime in 2016 to oppose the election of Donald Trump. Real Clear Investiagations reports:
Former DNC contractor and opposition researcher Alexandra “Ali” Chalupa not only worked closely with the Ukrainian Embassy and Clinton campaign, trading dirt on Manafort and Trump, but also Congress and the Obama White House, State Department and even the FBI.
Chalupa appears connected to the anti-Trump conspiracy plot Special Counsel John Durham is investigating, according to sources familiar with his probe. She is a material witness at least, but it is not known if she has been interviewed by his investigators.
Ms. Chalupa was part of a propaganda operation that failed. Perhaps she is jealous of Tucker Carlson’s success in presenting views she opposes.
A Return to Normalcy
That was Harding’s successful campaign slogan in 1920. He was running in a country turned upside-down by the Wilson’s wartime proto-Fascist government. Wilson, who was no friend of the Constitution, had stuck the government’s nose into too many corners of American life, and the people pushed back against his overreach.
I’ve been writing about the overreach the Democrats have been engaging in since the 2020 election. They’ve sought to impose abnormality on the public, and the public is starting to push back. And the trigger seems to have been what is happening to kids while they are in school.
Forced cosmetic masking and coverups of crimes against students were issues that swayed the election in Virginia last year. Racist propaganda in the form of so-called Critical Race Theory, inappropriate sexual topics in kindergarten, and hidden efforts to promote and enable “gender” transitions have sent parent lobbying at state legislatures this year.
For the most part, it seems their pushback is winning. Several states have outlawed teaching racism. This week, Florida passed a ban on inappropriate class related to sexuality.
Of course, the media and the Democrats (BIRM) are howling, and it looks as if many of them are willing to go into this November’s elections without letting go of their overreach.
Meanwhile, the public is beginning to notice that inflation is at its highest in over 40 years, that the world is tending toward WW3, and that they can’t afford to buy $55k EVs. Things are about to get uglier.
Stay tuned.
Quote of the Day
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды. There is no news in Pravda and no truth in Izvestia.
—Soviet-Era Russian Saying
Newsspeak and Newspeak
Has the CBC been made part of the Ministry of Truth?
“Experts say.” Which experts? The lexicographers working on the next edition of the Newspeak dictionary?
It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words. Of course the great wastage is in the verbs and adjectives, but there are hundreds of nouns that can be got rid of as well. … Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.