Featuring Right thinking from a left brain, doing the job the American Media Maggots won’t, embracing ubiquitous, sagacious perspicacity and broadcasting behind enemy lines in Occupied Kalifornia from the veritable Belly of the Beast, the Bill Mill in Sacramento, the capitol building at 10th and L Streets, I continue to proffer my thanks to the SHR Media Network for allowing me to utilize their studio and hijack their air twice weekly, Tuesdays and Thursday nights, thanks to my shameless contract — as well as appear on the Sack Heads: Against Tyranny Show every Wednesday night.
Hour 1: BZspoke to DANA THURSTON (@ThurstonDana on Twitter) about the Libertarian Party and Libertarianism in general. We also spoke about the Nolan Chart, the political spectrum, Libertarian misconceptions and why BZ is a “small L” Libertarian. Oh yeah. And a lot more.
Hour 2: BZ was grateful for Dana’s appearance, and we both agreed that there needs to return to the Saloon.
BZ then went on to talk about the nation rash of mortal stabbings that occurred, the likes of which the American Media Maggots conveniently avoided in their major broadcasts. Imagine that. Not serving the “guns are bad” meme.
By the way, if you didn’t already know, BZis in fact on iHeart radio. Click here.
If you want to listen to the show on Spreaker, audio only, click on the yellow button below.
If you care to watch the show on the SHR Media YouTube channel, click on the red arrow below. We kindly ask you to SUBSCRIBE to the SHR Media channel.
Please like us and follow us on Facebook! Video of the show is here on Facebook.
Join me, the Bloviating Zeppelin(on Twitter @BZep, Facebook as Biff Zeppe and the Bloviating Zeppelin, and on Gab.ai @BZep), every Tuesday and Thursday night on the SHR Media Network from 11 PM to 1 AM Eastern and 8 PM to 10 PM Pacific, at the Berserk Bobcat Saloon — where the speech is free but the booze is not.
As ever, thank you so kindly for listening, commenting, and interacting in the chat room or listening later via podcast.
Please remember we only monitor the chat room at SHRMEDIA.COM — though there is chat available on both Facebook and YouTube. Come on over to the SHR chat room where you’ll meet great friends!
Want to listen to all the Berserk Bobcat Saloon archives on Spreaker? Go here.
“Our defense of speech may have a greater or lesser harmful impact on the equality and justice work to which we are also committed.”
The American Civil Liberties Union will weigh its interest in protecting the First Amendment against its other commitments to social justice, racial equality, and women’s rights, given the possibility that offensive speech might undermine ACLU goals.
“Our defense of speech may have a greater or lesser harmful impact on the equality and justice work to which we are also committed,” wrote ACLU staffers in a confidential memoobtained by former board member Wendy Kaminer.
Translated: the First Amendment is a flexible, fungible and liquid document which may be applied when it happens not to conflict with any host of Social Justice Warrior goals and issues.
Soave really nails it next.
It’s hard to see this as anything other than a cowardly retreat from a full-throated defense of the First Amendment. Moving forward, when deciding whether to take a free speech case, the organization will consider “factors such as the (present and historical) context of the proposed speech; the potential effect on marginalized communities; the extent to which the speech may assist in advancing the goals of white supremacists or others whose views are contrary to our values; and the structural and power inequalities in the community in which the speech will occur.”
Those who operate between the margins of common sense know that it is the Second Amendment which has historically supported the First Amendment. That kind of support is apparently not in the future of the ACLU.
The memo also makes clear that the ACLU has zero interest in defending First Amendment rights in conjunction with Second Amendment rights. If controversial speakers intend to carry weapons, the ACLU “will generally not represent them.”
The memo’s authors assert that this does not amount to a formal change in policy, and is merely intended as guidelines that will assist ACLU affiliates in deciding which cases to take.
Right. I’m going to use a phrase with which the ACLU is well-acquainted: “chilling effect.” And I suspect it’s their point precisely. The First or Second Amendment aren’t absolutes. There are no more absolutes. There are merely unending shades of gray.
It seems fairly clear to me what’s happening here. Leadership would probably like the ACLU to remain a pro-First Amendment organization, but they would also like to remain in good standing with their progressive allies. Unfortunately, young progressives are increasingly hostile to free speech, which they view as synonymous with racist hate speech. Speech that impugns marginalized persons is not speech at all, in their view, but violence. This is why a student Black Lives Matter group shut down an ACLU event at the College of William & Mary last year, chanting “liberalism is white supremacy” and “the revolution will not uphold the Constitution.” Campus activism is illiberal, and liberal free speech norms conflict with the broad protection of emotional comfort that the young, modern left demands.
Again, what happens when true liberals die and Progressives take hold of every aspect of the Demorat Party? What happens when everything in life — as Progressives demand now and Demorats are clearly embracing — is nothing but a palette of gray, with nothing immured in any absolute whatsoever?
Even massive Leftist Nat Hentoff had questions about the ACLU before he passed away in 2017.
When you’re willing to quantify, parse, minimize and in some instances demean and work against freedom and liberty, what happens to this country? By dint of the Logical Extension, what happens to the rest of the world?
Perhaps the ACLU needs to be reminded of its name and the incredible importance of its letter “L”: LIBERTIES.
Leftists and the Deep State can’t wait to continue pushing for the diminishment and possible erasure of your First Amendment rights.
The FEC has been after the Drudge Report for years. So has the FCC. This, on its face, is a ridiculous goal. Matt Drudge hasn’t actually written anything for years; his site is nothing more than a laughingly-simplistic point on the internet that does nothing more than aggregate stories from around the globe.
That’s right. All the Drudge Report does is re-package stories written entirely from external sources. His source material is frequently the New York Times, the Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, Reuters, the AP, Slate, the Huffington Post, NPR, The Guardian — all bastions of Left-leaning journalism.
No matter; never allow facts, history, logic, rationality, proportion or common sense get in the way of a good fucked-up Leftist inclination, decision or bill. Not surprisingly, it’s a push from the FEC once again.
Drudge, Facebook, NYT readers could face libel suits for sharing ‘fake news’
by Paul Bedard
Political content on the internet, paid or not, should face substantial federal regulation to eliminate undefined “disinformation,” and users of platforms and news feeds, from Facebook, to Twitter, to the Drudge Report and even New York Times, could be punished for sharing “fake news” from those sites, the former Democratic chair of the FEC is urging.
In a broad proposal that adds threatening libel suits to regulatory plans already pushed by Democrats on the Federal Election Commission, ex-chair Ann Ravel believes that there is support for expanded regulation in the wake of reports foreign governments spent $100,000 on 2016 political ads on Facebook.
At whom, potentially, is this proposal aimed? Correct: you and me. People interested in politics and have sites on the internet as well as a social media presence. People who conduct internet radio shows. Like me. That’s next. Make no mistake.
She would include “fake news,” not just paid ads, to be regulated, though it’s never defined other than the Democrat’s description of “disinformation.” And anybody who shares or retweets it could face a libel suit.
Friends, this is a page ripped from the former Soviet Union. Your gulag awaits you!
She would also use regulation to “improve voter competence,” according to the new proposal titled Fool Me Once: The Case for Government Regulation of ‘Fake News.’ Ravel, who now lectures at Berkeley Law, still has allies on the FEC who support internet regulation.
Berkeley, of course — the locus of free speech in America.
The proposal immediately came under fire from from the Republican FEC commissioner who for years has been warning of the left’s effort to regulate political talk they don’t like, especially on conservative newsfeeds like Drudge.
Lee Goodman told Secrets, “Ann’s proposal is full blown regulation of all political content, even discussion of issues, posted at any time, for free or for a fee, on any online platform, from Facebook to the NewYorkTimes.com.”
He was especially critical of the undefined nature of “disinformation” to be regulated and the first-ever call for libel suits to snuff out talk Ravel doesn’t like.
And just whom determines “disinformation”? Kompromat or disinformatzia, tovarisch? A panel of Conservatives or a panel of Leftists? Correct. Leftists. Conservatives won’t be allowed within ten miles of a determination.
In their proposal, the trio wrote, “after a social media user clicks ‘share’ on a disputed item (if the platforms do not remove them and only label them as disputed), government can require that the user be reminded of the definition of libel against a public figure. Libel of public figures requires ‘actual malice,’ defined as knowledge of falsity or reckless disregard for the truth. Sharing an item that has been flagged as untrue might trigger liability under libel laws.”
We already have Speech Crimes in LeftistLand. There may be ClickCrimes. MindCrimes are, of course, next.
Then there is this from YahooNews.com, with John McCain in apparent agreement.
U.S. bill to regulate internet ads gains bipartisan support with McCain
by David Ingram
(Reuters) – U.S. legislation that would impose new disclosure requirements on political ads that run on Facebook and other websites received support on Wednesday from Senator John McCain, giving a bipartisan boost to a bill already popular among Democrats.
McCain, a longtime supporter of regulating campaign finances, and two Democratic senators, Amy Klobuchar and Mark Warner, plan to introduce the legislation on Thursday, according to a statement from their offices on Wednesday.
Good old John McCain. You can generally count on him to put his thumb in the eyes of freedom of speech any more. Or anything that he perceives President Trump might possibly support.
Online political ads are much more loosely regulated in the United States than political ads on television, radio and satellite services.
The lack of regulation was highlighted last month when Facebook Inc, Alphabet Inc’s Google and Twitter Inc said that they had found election-related ad buys on their services made by people in Russia in the run-up to last year’s U.S. presidential election. Non-Americans are generally not allowed to spend money to influence U.S. elections.
How about, instead of law after law, we just ask the social media to be more wary? Anyone think of that?
Speaking of Loving John, here is a bit of witty repartee between McCain and Fox’s Peter Doocey.
The question by Doocy was “has your relationship with the president frayed to the point where you’re not going to support anything that he comes to you and asks support for?”
McCain replies: “why would you ask anything that stupid? Why would you ask something that dumb? Huh? My job as a United States senator, as a senator from Arizona which I was just re-elected to, you mean that I’m somehow going to behave in a way that I’m going to block everything because of some personal disagreement? That’s a dumb question.”
Let’s see, John. Would that possibly be because you are in fact so vehemently opposed to most anything that President Trump has proposed, that you’ve worked hand-in-hand with the Demorats to slaughter the repeal of the ACA much less any replacement — you know, the very thing you ran on for eight years — as well as the slaughter of tax cuts? With regularity and consistency? John? Perhaps those things?
PHILADELPHIA — An emotional Sen. John McCain on Monday leveled a blistering attack on what he called the “half-baked, spurious nationalism” that seems to have inspired President Trump’s administration to retreat from the world stage.
In a speech to accept the National Constitution Center’s Liberty Medal, McCain, R-Ariz., emphasized that the United States is “a land made of ideals, not blood and soil,” a rebuke to the Nazi slogan about bloodlines and territory chanted in August by White supremacists demonstrating in Charlottesville, Va.
An at-times raspy-sounding McCain drew applause and cheers at the Philadelphia event when he said:
“To fear the world we have organized and led for three-quarters of a century, to abandon the ideals we have advanced around the globe, to refuse the obligations of international leadership and our duty to remain ‘the last, best hope of earth’ for the sake of some half-baked, spurious nationalism cooked up by people who would rather find scapegoats than solve problems is as unpatriotic as an attachment to any other tired dogma of the past that Americans consigned to the ash heap of history.”
A reminder:
I value two things primarily: honesty and clarity. So let’s be clear: the only reason the FEC or the FCC wish to limit and regulate speech under the guise of “fairness” or “equanimity” is to limit the speech of only one side: the conservative side. To limit the dissemination of information which thusly informs voters and allows Conservatives to acquire facts, data and particulars on political issues.
Because, after all, everything is political now.
Finally: where are the Republicans on this? Why no public GOP umbrage over the issue? Statements? Decisions to oppose? Republicans taking a stand against this?
Another reason Conservative trust in the GOP has almost vanished. Another reason that Republican fundraising is down this quarter. Consequences for inaction? Gridlock? Failure to keep election promises? Failure to coalesce and utilize power the GOP possesses presently?
They’ve repeatedly tried and failed to impose regulations on Internet political communications, possibly even media sites like the Drudge Report, but congressional testimony that unnamed Russians spent $100,000 for politically themed ads on Facebook is sparking a new bid by Democrats on the Federal Election Commission.
The FEC, specifically, tried back in 2014 as Paul Bedard, the author of this newest article above, documented here:
FEC chair warns that conservative media like Drudge Report and Sean Hannity face regulation — like PACs
by Paul Bedard
Government officials, reacting to the growing voice of conservative news outlets, especially on the internet, are angling to curtail the media’s exemption from federal election laws governing political organizations, a potentially chilling intervention that the chairman of the Federal Election Commission is vowing to fight.
The real truth is this — no more complicated.
“The right has begun to break the left’s media monopoly, particularly through new media outlets like the internet, and I sense that some on the left are starting to rethink the breadth of the media exemption and internet communications,” he added.
When you cannot win the war of ideas, that is to say “the message,” then your only alternative is to shut down “the messenger” which, in these cases, translates to the internet itself and some sites specifically, like Drudge. Mine is next. So is yours.
(FEC Chairman Lee Goodman) added, “Truth be told, I want conservative media to have the same exemption as all other media.”
That translates to, as I have said for quite some time: “No one is equal until everyone is equal.”
The history explained here, as well.
You can already see the Leftist social media giants shutting down free speech. But whose free speech? Those on the right. Leftist speech remains predominantly uninterrupted, undisturbed and inviolate unless it is so shockingly egregious that even the American Media Maggots begin to notice a bit. Even then, not consistently. Death threats against President Trump on Twitter, for example, tend to remain unless they are somehow brought to light. Massive light.
Liberals over the years have also pushed for a change in the Federal Communications Commission‘s “fairness doctrine” to cut off conservative voices, and retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens has delighted Democrats recently with a proposed Constitutional amendment that some say could force the media to stop endorsing candidates or promoting issues.
At one point the “fairness doctrine” — which is the precise opposite, of course — ruled in media. Its attempt, originally, was to actually ensure some semblance of “fairness” in broadcasting when media choices were extremely limited, the precise opposite of today.
See my previous posts about the so-called “Fairness Doctrine”:
I value two things primarily: honesty and clarity. So let’s be clear: the only reason the FEC or the FCC wish to limit and regulate speech under the guise of “fairness” or “equanimity” is to limit the speech of only one side: the conservative side. To limit the dissemination of information which thusly informs voters and allows Conservatives to acquire facts, data and particulars on political issues.
Because, after all, everything is political now.
Finally: where are the Republicans on this? Why no public GOP umbrage over the issue? Statements? Decisions to oppose? Republicans taking a stand against this?
Another reason Conservative trust in the GOP has almost vanished.
Featuring Right thinking from a left brain, doing the job the American Media Maggots won’t, embracing ubiquitous, sagacious perspicacity and broadcasting behind enemy lines in Occupied Kalifornia from the veritable Belly of the Beast, the Bill Mill in Sacramento, the capitol building at 10th and L Streets, I continue to proffer my thanks to the SHR Media Network for allowing me to utilize their studio and hijack their air twice weekly, Tuesdays and Thursday nights, thanks to my shameless contract — as well as appear on the Sack Heads: Against Tyranny Show every Wednesday night.
Leftists and the Deep State can’t wait to continue pushing for the diminishment and possible erasure of your First Amendment rights.
First, from the