Hey, Elon!

Here’s a thought for the “new” Twitter:

Free speech is important, but so is free listening. But the control should be on the listening side, not the speech side. Everyone should be allowed to speak, but by the same logic they should be allowed to limit what they hear (but not who others can hear! ). To facilitate this end, I propose that you create two fundamental classes of user account: Private and Public.

Private accounts are membership-only access, and have only a cursory public page announcing their existence and how to join. The posts on these accounts can be seen and responded to by members. No member may be denied the right to read or respond to any post. However, members can be removed at the request of the account owner. If the private account owner decides to remove a member, all posts by the removed member – and any posts by other members, including the account owner, in response to those of the removed member – will immediately be deleted.  This prevents the account owner from continuing or referring to the removed member’s communication threads without the removed member having the ability to respond.

Public accounts can be read and responded to by all. However, like the private account owner, the public account should be able to restrict what they view. Thus, the public account owner can block their own view of posts from those whom they don’t want to hear. This will not prevent any other user from viewing or responding to a post on the account unless they, too, block the user. An option will exist for a user to automatically adopt the public account owner’s block list while viewing that public account, but this will have no affect on the viewing of posts on any other account. Also, while the contents of the blocked post will not be seen by the owner or viewer who has blocked or has accepted the blocked list of the public account owner, the fact that a response exists will not be masked and a link will remain in its place that any user – whether or not the post is from an account they block – can click on to view the blocked response directly. This will prevent the silencing of voices with which the account owner does not agree, while still giving people the opportunity to maintain the right to control what they hear.

What say you, Elon? Worth a shot?

I’m sure it will make the Nazi’s – pronounced “Democratic Socialists” – nuts. Oh, well; added bonus… 🙂

Desperation?

Going for the “burnout” vote? The felon vote, maybe? Or just a desperate move to “buy” votes before the mid-terms?

North Carolina governor pushes to legalize marijuana possession after Biden pardons: ‘End this stigma’

I don’t care if they legalize weed (but I’d hoped they’d have some means to determine intoxication level before doing so), but past possession cases were still violations of the law. If you don’t like the law, then change it; but until then you’re still a criminal if you violate the law.

Note that he’s not offering to pardon the offenders himself. Know why? Because if he did this before the election no past offender would need to vote for him; they’d stay home on poll day and get high. But if he suggests that he might – if he is kept in office – well, hope is a powerful motivator.

But it’s still no different than bribing people for their votes.

No evidence of widespread voter fraud?

Keep in mind that – because of the electoral college system used here in the U.S.- it might only require a 100,000 votes or so, strategically placed around the county, to swing a Federal election. Pennsylvania, where this particular fraud took place, is one of those critical swing-state locations:

Former Dem Rep gets 30-month prison sentence in ballot-stuffing election fraud case

While this perpetrator was caught before the 2020 election, I wonder if their fraud techniques were in place and available for use by others?

Is this the Democracy you want?

A democracy where a duly-elected government leader and her party are labeled “neofacist” by left-leaning American mainstream media, instead of celebrating her as the first female prime minister of Italy? Where “democracy” is defined not as  “…elected by the people…”, but instead by who wins?

It may not be the democracy you envisioned, but it is still democracy. To suggest otherwise – simply because those who won are not of your political persuasion – poses a significant danger to all democratic systems of representation.

 

The Purge

Well, that’s one way to purge conservatives from the education system:

Over 800 NYC Teachers Fired Over Vaccine Mandate

And this even though Biden has announced that the COVID pandemic is over…??

It’s unfortunate, but this plays right into the liberal takeover of our education system – and the “dumbing-down” of our children so that they don’t question the progressive socialist agenda.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Spin, spin, spin…

How politicians can spin their past statements in excess of reason with a straight face is beyond me. Here’s a great example from John Fetterman:

Fetterman campaign walks back apparent call to ‘free’ every convicted second-degree murderer

Here’s what he allegedly said:

“I hope that it could lead to a conversation that would free close to 1,200 people of a legacy that never made sense, that encompasses victims’ input, encompasses their conduct and behavior in prison…”

He’s talking here about freeing prisoners who have been convicted of 2nd degree murder – literally all of them in Pennsylvania. But he got heat for his stance amid the current crime wave in Democrat lead cities due to soft-on-crime and no-bail “progressive” criminal reforms. To get around this push-back, here’s his campaigns latest “spin” on this issue:

…the Fetterman campaign said his 2021 remarks at the PLSE conference “are being taken out of context,” and that it is not clear, based on Fetterman’s phrasing at the time, that he was talking about freeing people from prison.

Uh, so “… a conversation that would free close to 1,200 people…” was going to free exactly who? People who are not in prison? Oh, and the number of people in Pennsylvania prisons for 2nd degree murder at the time he made the statement? Interestingly, about 1200…

But, you see, it just doesn’t matter. Fetterman supporters aren’t looking for the truth; they’re just looking for a reason to ignore his soft-on-crime stance. Fetterman voters are going to vote Democrat no matter what – they just need a means to clear their conscience while doing so.

Good luck, world. You’re going to need it.

Can’t give a win to Republicans before the primary…

Any other reason to delay the vote in a Democrat-controlled congress on such a bi-partisan, hot-topic issue?

Senate won’t act on same-sex marriage bill until after midterms

Think about it: If the bill failed Democrats could use it to beat Republicans over the head as opposing LGBTQ rights. However, if the bill passed it would show that moderate Republicans are cooperative for truly liberal (not “progressive-liberal”, but liberal as in “liberty”) rights-related cases. It would also undermine the current mantra being spewed by Kamela Harris that the only way forward is to elect Democrats and break the filibuster.

Can’t show Congressional unity like that before a partisan election, now can we? Not if you want control, anyway…

Bad news for Republicans

I’m not a fan of ranked choice voting. In this case I expected it to benefit the Republican candidate (especially in Alaska, where a Republican has held this seat for nearly 50 years). But, alas, people really hate Trump:

Peltola wins U.S. House race, first woman and Alaska Native to represent Alaska in House

The Trump-endorsed candidate (“I can see Russia from my house”) didn’t win 50% of the vote as required in the first round of vote counts – and, in fact, wasn’t even in the lead (the Democrat candidate was ahead by a significant margin). However, the third place candidate – eliminated under ranked-choice and whose votes were redistributed to their 2nd choice candidates – was a Republican. It was expected that their votes would go to the remaining Republican (and Trump-endorsed candidate), Sarah Palin, and give them the win. But, alas, people really hate Trump: only ~50% of these voters actually chose Palin as their 2nd choice. Roughly 21% of these votes had no 2nd choice candidate, and nearly 29% chose the Democrat candidate instead. It was enough for Democrat candidate and native Alaskan Mary Peltola to win the election, replacing the now-deceased Republican congressman (since 1973!) Don Young.

This was an interesting race, in part because ranked choice voting really didn’t change the election results; under the old “majority wins” rule the Democrat would have won anyway. But it does show that some voters will switch parties for their alternate choices if they simply don’t like one of their own party’s candidates. In the words if the iconic Mr. Spock: “Fascinating.”

I still don’t like rank choice voting; I can think of several ways such a system can be gamed (no need to cover them here and give people ideas…!).  But the willingness of voters to change parties for a 2nd choice candidate is intriguing.

Oh, yeah – and moderate voters simply don’t like Trump. Maybe the Democrat strategy of helping Trump candidates win primaries will pay off in the end.

Go figure.