Mel Wild looks at these issues from a somewhat different viewpoint than my own. Equally valid? Think so. Because we have fouled up our election systems in so many states, nobody has the time to completely apprehend every aspect of the problem. However, it helps to look at the results at the investigations of others.
We probably shouldn’t be surprised that 2020 will end with election chaos resembling that of a third-world banana republic. For those of us who paid attention and did our own research, we’ve witnessed hearings and actual evidence of perhaps the most systemic election fraud ever perpetrated against the American people. We’ve also witnessed massive suppression of this information from the mainstream media and big tech.
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Citizen Tom 
An interesting visualisation, the spatial distribution of votes by blocks of 250,000:
@marmoewp
Just suggests where people live. Typically what people do is list the counties won by each candidate. Democrats dominate the urban areas, and Republicans dominate the rural. The fact that Democrats dominate the urban areas makes it easier for them to corrupt the voting systems in a large county and swing the vote their way, especially since judges are educated in elite, very Liberal Democrat universities.
This distribution is something people tend to forget, when the election maps are shown in red and blue, and it looks like land area votes rather than people.
Corruption must run deep, indeed, when the Republican SCOTUS judges threw out the Paxton lawsuit for lack of standing, even Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett. Such ungrateful people. What did Trump appoint them for, if they will not rule in his favor?
@marmoewp
🤔Sounds like an irrefutable criticism. I guess I should just concede the point. NOT!
Question: Why do people put up with tyranny? Why has any tyrant ever existed?
Lots of things are difficult to explain. The moral failings of human beings is one of them, but the Bible makes it clear we have our problems. The conventional wisdom is that we are basically good. Yet authoritarian rule is the historical norm. Most of the world is still ruled by authoritarian regimes, and the trend towards democracy seems to be reversing. Pick your favorite tyrant. Why was he or she ever allowed to rule?
The fact that people cannot be trusted with power is what it is. Therefore, when we set up an election, to keep it honest we must provide the means to ensure the integrity of the election. The basic thrust of the Trump legal team’s complaint is that state legislatures are responsible for choosing their state’s electors. When state legislatures choose to have the electors chosen via an election, the state legislatures make the rules. Unfortunately, we know for a fact that in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan; state and/or local officials changed the rules, making it far easier to cheat. The courts refused to hear the case. However, these constitutional issues are easier enough to verify.
The German edition of Epoch Times routinely focuses on crime by immigrants and caters to the far right wing of the political spectrum, the Alternative für Deutschland, and its farther out fringes. For perspective: A major wing of that party is classified as being right wing extremist by the German Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution. A youth organization of the AfD was shuttered, just before it was officially declared to be under surveilance for right wing extremism. That is the target market of the German edition of the Epoch Times.
I know, what I am doing here is the poisoning of wells, but I just want to make you very aware of the company you are seeking and the what kind of enterprise the new beacon of information is, that apparently you put your trust in. Keep that in mind, as you read their reporting.
@ marmoewp
I understand what you’re trying to say about The Epoch Times, but as I said in my post, at least they are honest about their bias. The MSM is not. So my question is, if The Epoch Times is far-right, then what about the far-left agencies that get a pass, like CNN, NYT, and the MSM? They are about as biased to the left as one can get.
And just because The Epoch Times is politically slanted toward the right doesn’t mean that what they report isn’t credible. At least, they bother to investigate news that the MSM purposely suppressed from the public forum. We do need both sides of the story, for sure, and do our own research. But we must also understand that, with regard to the American elections, the MSM has purposely engaged in suppressing the news that doesn’t fit their anti-Trump narrative. And because of this, they have had a definite influence on the elections in the minds of the American people.
Btw, here’s the latest response to the Texas suit, which like all other decisions, was not because of lack of evidence (the case has never been allowed to be argued), but was dismissed on standing. Obviously, there’s opinion being stated here from The Epoch Times, but at least we’re getting the other side of this critical issue from them.
Quoting Giuliani: “If the state doesn’t have standing, surely the president of the United States has standing. And certainly the electors in the states have standing. So they will be bringing those very cases right in those courts, starting today,” Giuliani said. “And let’s see what excuse they can try to use to avoid having a hearing on that.”
https://www.theepochtimes.com/trump-approves-filing-retooled-texas-style-election-challenges-giuliani_3615492.html
Going by the selection of sources you link to here and in other posts, it is my impression, that your diet is one-sided by choice. At a guess, you’ll consider mine to be one-sided, as well. I do know for sure, I would not trust James O’Keefe after all those distortions he published in the past. If you think, you can filter out the bias fed to you, all I can do is wish you luck, as that is a a very tough job to pull off.
I fact-checked myself examples given by you on this blog on incidences of election fraud, e.g. the claims that in some precints more votes than registered voters were counted, and found none of them holding up to scrutiny. I posted my findings in the replies here. I find it devastating, that nonetheless about three quarters of Repbulicans seem to think, that the election was not fair. I think, American democracy is in grave danger, as a major part of the people loses touch with reality, All I can do is urge you: You would doublecheck any claim made by Democrats before believing it. Please, do apply the same kind of scrutiny to news that you consider valid, that you want to believe.
P.S.: I checked NYT, LATimes, CNN, FoxNews on the Supreme Court order. All of them reported the lack of standing, most of them cited the order. In case you did not look for yourself.
@ marowoewp.
I do know that my sources were one-sided. I only offer them as an alternative to the opposite bias of the MSM. I read the MSM, also. I know they reported the Texas case.
You said: “I do know for sure, I would not trust James O’Keefe after all those distortions he published in the past.”
You don’t trust the actual words from Jeff Zucker and others on CNN? The tapes were recordings, not opinions from O’Keefe. He has released hours of their conference calls, unedited, where they expressly talk about their strategy to depress any stories that are anti-Biden or pro-Trump. You can listen for yourself.
You said: “I fact-checked myself examples given by you on this blog on incidences of election fraud, e.g. the claims that in some precints more votes than registered voters were counted, and found none of them holding up to scrutiny.
They don’t hold up to the scrutiny of who? You didn’t watch the actual hearings then. There’s data that shows over 100% voter turn-out in some precincts in Milwaukee County. Of course, none of this has been allowed to be used in courts that refuse to hear the case.
You said: “I find it devastating, that nonetheless about three quarters of Repbulicans seem to think, that the election was not fair. I think, American democracy is in grave danger, as a major part of the people loses touch with reality….”
“As a major part of of the people loses touch with reality?” Which reality? Both the left and right have created their own echo chamber reality. I have watched the actual hearings from Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia, Arizona, and Wisconsin (yesterday). These were witnesses and experts who have sworn affidavits (under penalty of perjury) testifying of anomalies, actual evidence of fraud, and other illegal actions of these local precincts. So, who is ignoring reality? You can read the evidence and affidavits, if you so choose. They are available online. If there’s anything made-up, it’s the narrative that the MSM is spinning.
This whole thing is still a major issue because much of it is reality. The truth is–other than the hearings with state legislatures (which were not covered by the MSM)–no court thus far has allowed the mountain of evidence to be argued. The cases have been dismissed on standing without even hearing the case. So, there’s a very good reason why people are upset and feel like they’ve been disenfranchised by this election. It won’t go away until the whole thing is fully exposed and given a fair hearing. Biden’s legitimacy will always be questioned. This would only be devastating for our country if it all gets swept under the proverbial rug, which it looks like the powers that be will prevail in doing at this point.
If Biden and the Democrats actually wanted to legitimatize this election, I would think they would be the first offer to have everything disclosed, instead of totally ignoring or dismissing it as a waste of time. If they’ve got nothing to hide, what do they have to lose? They’re actually making it worse by not addressing this head on.
I have not heard about the Zucker recordings. What I have seen, is that O’Keefee has played fast and loose with facts in the past and was very creative in editing. He could vouch vor 2+2 being 4 and I would check.
Yes, that was one of the claims I looked into, e.g. Ward 326 in Milwaukee. Living in Wisconsin, you are of course aware of election day registration, right? The precints reported all votes cast (election day registrants + registrants before election day), but the states registration statistics excluded elections day registration (they clearly said registrations as of Nov 1st on those pages). Some useful idiots boneheadedly divided one by the other and, instead of doing a sanity check, ran around claiming fraud. I did look at some examples given by a reporter at the ward level [1], all of them divided by number of registrants before election day. I strongly advise you, again, to check your trusted sources. Do you really want to go to court with “evidence” like that?
Should you have any other ward from that hearing in mind, where you think that the 100%+ voterfraud applies, please name it, I will take a look at the spreadsheets I have downloaded.
[1]case in point: https://mkecitywire.com/stories/564495243-analysis-seven-milwaukee-wards-report-more-2020-presidential-votes-than-registered-voters-biden-nets-146k-votes-in-city
“I have not heard about the Zucker recordings…”
That would probably be because your diet is one-sided. 🙂
Full CNN phone recordings:
One of many highlights, where Zucker is instructing his reporters on what the story lines should be (crafting the narrative):
Strike that question about going to court with nonsense. Ken Paxton has lowered the bar enough with his 1 in a quadrillion chance claim, that anything seems to go. What that “expert” tested, were the hypotheses, that Biden could not have gotten his result had he performed like Clinton v. Trump, nor could Biden have gotten it, if mail-in voter voted like in-person voters. Guess what, people vote for candidates of different parties in different elections and it was known that a lot more Democrats voted by mail. So those odds are meaningless nonsense meant to impress the rubes, written by a Professor who had the education to know better.
https://reason.com/volokh/2020/12/09/more-on-statistical-stupidity-at-scotus/
@marmoewp
I read that and wondered about it. Didn’t see how they could make that assertion. What is odd is that Trump had raised his margins in so many other states. People in this country generally get their news from the same sources. Of course, Conservatives and Liberal Democrats don’t necessarily look at the same news sources, but with the Internet every news source is available nationally. So, it is kind of odd that Trump increased his margins in places as far apart as Texas and Florida and lost in places where there is evidence of fraud. Statistically, that is incongruous, weirdly so.
Should we expect lawyers to well understand statistics? I have studied enough of the work of doctors and psychologists to appreciate how hopeless that is. Even NASA does not get it right.
Think about the fact we put on school teacher onboard a Space Shuttle flight. If we are going to put a teacher onboard, we must think the Space Shuttle quite safe, right? It wasn’t. The engineers did make certain that they modeled the subsystems and tried their best to assure themselves that there was only one chance in a thousand that each of the subsystems would fail. However, there were two problems with this analysis.
The point is that you are rejecting the entire Texas filing because you found one thing in it that strikes you as foolish. That is even more ignorant than what NASA did with respect to determining the safety and reliability of the Space Shuttle. Even if the NASA management forgot to consider the overall system safety, at least they looked at all the systems.
@ marwoewp
You said: “What that “expert” tested, were the hypotheses, that Biden could not have gotten his result had he performed like Clinton v. Trump, nor could Biden have gotten it, if mail-in voter voted like in-person voters.”
But that’s not even the biggest point here. The more pertinent question is, why did Biden under-perform both Obama and Clinton in other Democratic strongholds like New York, LA, and Chicago, but significantly over-performed in Milwaukee, Detroit, Philadelphia, and Atlanta? Why only in these particular cities?
If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck…
And on the subject of what’s quacking like a fraud, we’re going to see a LOT more coming out in the next couple of weeks on Dominion. For instance, we’ll see what comes of this breaking news…..
“Crucial Logs Missing From Antrim County Dominion Voting Machines: Forensics Report”
https://www.theepochtimes.com/crucial-logs-missing-from-antrim-county-dominion-voting-machines-forensics-report_3617768.html
“Dominion Software Intentionally Designed to Influence Election Results: Forensics Report”
https://www.theepochtimes.com/dominion-software-intentionally-designed-to-influence-election-results-forensics-report_3617675.html
Don’t make me laugh. The same bullshit claim of overvoting applies to Trump states like Idaho, Iowa, and others. Just take the votes and divide by outdated registration numbers. Like here
The reason you do not see bullshit claims of voter fraud is that these states were won by Trump and Trumpsters have no interest in looking for “fraud” there.
As for the Challenger Catastrophe, human space flight never was considered safe, that claim is bullshit. It was merely that the risks weighed against the gains was considered acceptable. This goes for the astronauts, too. And yes, I am one of the people who consider the risk worth taking, too. The root cause of the Challenger catastophy, however, was managers deciding to launch the shuttle at temperatures lower than any launch before and at temperatures more than 10°C lower than any flight, where all booster seals remained intact.
To be fair, that data got closer scrutiny only after the disaster, but it was not an “oh, bad luck” moment. You do not blame a traffic accident on snow to bad luck, if you are still using summer tires, either. And about your example, if you have just 1000 subsystems with a 1 in thousand failure rate, you will have failure of the complete system in about 1 in ten tries. Unlike you, engineers know that and strive for way lower failure rates. Don’t let that stop you from trying to make me look foolish.
Anyway, I do not dismiss the Paxton lawsuit because of that single bullshit “one in a quadrillion” claim (although it speaks to the lack of scrutiny going into its writing), but because each and every piece of so-calle dproof that has been presented to me so far was bullshit. When I point this out here, the standard reply is: “Oh that may be right in this case, but look, here are tons of more more bullshit for you to wade through. Oh, and even if you do, I won’t listen anyway, because reasons and FRAUUUUDDDDDDD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” Screaming “FRAUD!!! FRAUD!!! FRAUD!!!” does not make something fraudulent, even if it pleases your echo chamber.
Do yourself a favour. Play devils advocate, take one piece of socalled evidence you find convincing and try as hard as you can to disprove it. Not just pretend to, but do it. Hold your nose, read what the MSM has to say about it, what other bloggers of non-Conservative persuasion have to say about it. Truely investigate.
God gifted you with some gray matter between your ears. It would be a shame, were you to waste it by disuse.
@marmoewp
I was working at NASA JSC when the Challenger blew up. Part of my job was calculating the safety of the ascent phase up to main engine cutoff.
Civil servants are nothing if not risk adverse. Risky missions require test pilots, not school teachers transmitting lessons for school children.
The reusability of Space Shuttle depended upon system reliability. If a system is reliable, it is also going to be safe. After launching for years (The Challenger blew up on the 25th launch.), the launches had become almost routine. Still, I was a bit amazed when they put a school teacher onboard. It was a pure publicity stunt.
Was the low temperature a factor? Yes. Test pilot Chuck Yeager, who served on the investigation commission, looked at that fact and said the conclusion of the commission should be not to launch when cold. Heads rolled, anyway. People would have been angry about dead astronauts who knew the risks, but they would not forgive the death of the school teacher.
@marmoewp
The only reason I discussed that statistic is because you made an issue of it, and it is still your only issue. Your effort refute what I said with respect to FL and TX doesn’t apply. The point is that if Trump won with increased margins in huge states like FL and TX then his margins should have increased elsewhere as well.
@ Tom
@ marmowoewp
Looks like the election investigation will continue at least until Jan. 6th….
“Pennsylvania, Georgia, Nevada, and Arizona Republican Electors Cast Votes for Trump”
https://www.theepochtimes.com/pennsylvania-georgia-nevada-and-arizona-republican-electors-cast-votes-for-trump_3618147.html
@Mel Wild
Yep! Comes down to Congress, which is dominated by the Swamp. Basic headache at this point is that the public has to be convinced that election was stolen. A clear majority and a loud majority must speak out. With something like COVID and a hostile news media, that is a hard combination to put together. Trump has to have something that makes his case unambiguous, so unambiguous the liars cannot cast sufficient doubt to leave most people in doubt. We can blog our hearts out, but the so-called mainstream news media drowns us out.
The Georgia Senate run off finishes Jan 5th. They are already in early voting. Because of the stakes, we have to focus on it. Lots of Republicans will not vote if they don’t think it worth the bother because Democrats have perfected a system for cheating.
@Tom
Could you please elaborate, this argument does not make sense to me. Are you trying to make the argument, that Trump should have increased margins everywhere, because he has increased them in two large states that he won?!?
@marmoewp
The rest of the Republican Party won the election. They gained seats in Congress and statehouses. Trump generated a huge turnout. So, yes. I think the results in FL and TX difficult to explain.
@Mel Wild
The biggest point is, they found it important enough to put utter hogwash into a filing to the supreme court. Let’s leave it at that.
So let’s change the subject. Alleged under-performance. It so happens, that I had happened to look at state-level results earlier and from that data collection already done, a state-level comparison Biden v. Clinton was easy to do. The “underperformance” that you claim is not reflected at the state level. If I find the time, I may look more into this.
What the figure shows: (votes cast for Biden / total votes cast in 2020) – (votes cast for Clinton / total votes cast in 2016) as percentage points
The figure shows Biden’s state-level incresases in percent points of the votershare v. Clinton’s. The changes are even more pronounced if you just look at total voter turnout, but that is due to the much higher overall voter mobilisation this year and to some extent to population growth.
@marmoewp
We can argue until doomsday about the statistics. What is easily provable is that politicians undermined our rules election integrity, often in violation of the law using COVID-19 as an excuse. One of the problems, for example, is that Georgia did not enforce the lawful requirement for the signature verification of mail-in ballots. When we count enough ballots of uncertain origin, we have no way of saying who won. We are just going through the motions. Hence, all the statistics do is indicate that it is reasonable to be suspicious. What is more important, however, is that we have no good reason to believe the results.
@ marmoewp
Your state-level analysis is irrelevant. We’re talking about specific cities that have a high impact on their perspective state. For instance, Milwaukee and Dane (Madison) Counties in Wisconsin have 26% of the state’s entire population, and since they vote 70-80% percent Democrat, any overperformance in these counties will affect the election more than the rest of the state. And this is where the irregularities lie with the large number of illegal mail-in ballots. Without these apparent disparities in Milwaukee and Dane counties, Trump would’ve easily won the state (he only lost by 20,000 as it was). Another way to say it, if Biden would’ve performed in Milwaukee like he did in Chicago, New York, or LA, he would’ve lost Wisconsin. The same could be said of the cities in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Georgia. And, again, why the over-performance is only in these battleground cities?
@Tom, @Mel
I’ve had a look at NYC, Chicago, Milwaukee. When it comes to votes, Biden outperformed(!) Clinton in all of them, by 7.2%, 3.5% and 9.8%. He is also outperforming both Obama elections turnout in the big cities, but not in Milwaukee. What did however change drastically in NYC and Chicago, but not in Milwaukee, is that Trump increased his (still small) share of votes by 39.8%, 33.9% in NYC and Chicago, but just by 6.7% in Milswaukee. The large changes in NYC and Chicago decreased Bidens __share__ in votes, and hence we see the effect you dub “under-performance”. In reality in these three cities, it is due to the variation in Trump voter turnout. In Milwaukee Trump is still so unpopular, that he got fewer votes than both McCain and Romney.
I posit, that the underperformance you attribute to Biden is in reality the large variation in Trump gains. Mind you, this hypothesis is based on just three cities. So these are my preliminary, tentative findings only, I’ll have to look at other cities, too, but data collection simply eats up large amounts of time.
@ marmoewp
You’re a data expert now? LOL! The large increase in Trump’s vote in NYC and Chicago should normally decrease Biden’s vote, which is what should’ve followed in battleground cities, which it didn’t.
As far as Milwaukee goes, we know there were late night ballot dumps from Milwaukee and Dane counties that were 100% Biden (after it was becoming clear that Trump would win the state), which totally changed the normal relationship between the numbers. Not to mention, whatever was going on with the unsupervised Dominion adjudication shenanigans. Over 200,000 ballots were found to be illegal, according to Wisconsin law, in an audit which the state court caved on. The whole thing is a ridiculous farce. But if you think it was all legitimate, you must think Venezuela’s elections are legitimate, too. They’re run about the same way.
As far as Trump’s performance vs. Romney in Milwaukee, there’s no difference between Romney and a Democrat, so that would make sense in a Democrat-machine run city.
@Mel
So you are down to ridicule, Mel? Running out of arguments, already? Let me tell you as a physicist, that data handling is trivially easy. Even you should not find that task taxing.
The Dominion hardware claims are a diversion, as hand counts have invariably confirmed the automated count. That leaves you with claims of ballot stuffing and that votes were accepted, which should not have been accepted. Your side has been laughed out of court over and over and over again for lack of concrete hard evidence, because you have none.
That you are seeminbly unable to understand, that different sections of the population may vote with different results for the candidates, or that results from mail-in ballots are expected to differ from in-person ballots, because way more registered Democrats voted by mail than Republicans. is regretable, but does not constitute proof of fraud.
@ marmoewp
Look who’s ridiculing who here! And look who’s living in an alternate view of reality! By your own snide comments, you obviously have not followed the investigation beyond the MSM echo chamber. No, they have not been laughed out of court (unless you’re talking about the court of public opinion, which means nothing). The Federal courts have not ruled on merit yet, only on standing. The evidence hasn’t even been tried yet, so your parroting the MSM ridicule just shows your willful ignorance about what’s going on.
As far as Dominion, in spite of your Newspeak answer, there’s a lot of troubling revelations about that software. The recent Michigan audit revealed that it wasn’t user error that caused the shift in ballots. It revealed a 68% error rate, which bounces a majority of mail-in ballots to adjudication, which is where it was unsupervised and highly susceptible to fraud because it’s where users can literally change the ballots. So, counting the same fraudulent ballots doesn’t reveal anything. They would have to do a deep forensic audit of the ballots and signature-matching to prove that the recount is accurate.
My “data expert” jab was because you seem to know better than the data experts who’ve testified in the hearings. And those anomalies are just minor issues compared to the real problems with this election.
Anyway, I now realize that you are always right and I must always be wrong, so I will bow out of this conversation. We will all see what happens in the end. If the investigation gets an honest hearing or will they just sweep it all under the proverbial rug.
@Mel
If you can not take ridicule in retaliation for your ridicule, simply don’t start it.
Your data expert jibe was clearly meant at my reading of the alleged Biden underperformance, as you did not mention Dominion machines in that reply with a single word. So do not lie about what you meant. That is not the way, when you try to find ground again.
As for that Dominion report, I will have a look at it, at my own leisure.
SCOTUS order, Texas lacks standing
Click to access 121120zr_p860.pdf
Tin foil hat conspiracy land. That’s the real serious problem. You believe stuff that people who either don’t know of what they are talking, or if people who do know it’s a scam and tell you what you want to hear. (Like Trump will definitely prevail at law if he gets before his hand picked Supremes -yea sure he will).
The MSM is just “the press”. The “deep state” is just “the state”. Some of you are like children who woke up yesterday and realized mommy and daddy had sex at some point and you just don’t want to believe it or you do believe it and it is ruining your life. You can be skeptical without being so ridiculously cynical, you know.
Nobody likes big tech, neither Democrats nor Republicans, neither liberals nor conservatives (although perhaps for very different reasons). Take FB as an example. In one sense, they are a monopolist devil, but on the other they have devised a brilliant advertising scheme that very effectively targets market demographics with a pin point accuracy that leaves every other form of mass media ad buy in their dust. In a sense, their logarithms make us target market ourselves by what WE chose to “like” and share. If I am someone who wants to sell my product (whether it’s shoes or a political ideology) why would I go for an expensive shotgun mass media ad buy when I can surgically sell only to the folks who are literally looking for my product? It is pure capitalism shot right into the consumers’ blood stream. It’s the Wild West of the market, but it’s all run by one big amazingly successful ranch.
On the one hand, you guys (and gals) are mad because you believe that FB and Twitter sensor conservative speech (?). On the other hand, you must know that these are private companies have the right to censor whoever they want without guvmint interference (you unconstitutional socialists, you ). On the one hand, FB is a publisher who ought to be responsible for its libelous untruthful content, but on the other hand they are just a platform who says that they are not responsible for what individual user publishers do. If the government regulates them, are they regulating speech? If the government shuts them down or breaks them up, are they just hurting companies and consumers by making the free market less free and efficient? I don’t know, and if you think you do, and your not some sort of economics, media, marketing, legal guru, then you think way too highly of your opinion. But that is nothing new here, is it? Nobody actually knows anything, but everybody has a freeking opinion, don’t wr my Christian brothers and sisters? 😄
On the one hand, you guys (and gals) are mad because you believe that FB and Twitter sensor conservative speech (?). On the other hand, you must know that these are private companies have the right to censor whoever they want without guvmint interference (you unconstitutional socialists, you )
If they are indeed a private company and not subject to guidelines for the protections of free speech the they are subject to liability for the speech they actively police.
You can’t have it both ways. Either they are a private entity and liable, or they are a public forum, and protected. But as a public forum they cannot police speech arbitrarily and capriciously. The same standards have to apply to all.
@ Liz and tsalmon.
Exactly, Liz. Right now, these billionaire big tech oligarchs are protected by a piece of Federal legislation called Section 230. It was this legal loophole that allowed them to be our modern day Robber Barons.
Section 230 provides immunity to social media companies like Facebook and Twitter against being sued over the content on their site. But now that they are moderating content and de-platforming people who disagree with their politics, Section 230 should no longer apply to them because they are acting like publishers now.
Yes, they are private and can have a political bias. But they should not have the protection of Section 230 also then be open to law suit for their capricious behavior.
@Mel Wild
@Lis
@tsalmon
Google, Facebook, and the other Big Tech companies also monopolistic. Facebook will probably broken up, and some of the others most certainly need competition.
@ Tom.
I couldn’t agree more. And I hope that will be the case.
This may surprise you, but I agree.
@marmoewp
I don’t think you stupid. So, I am not surprised. I am just not surprised that breaking up these companies, if they really are broken up, won’t happen until after the election.
I remember what happened to Microsoft when Sun Corporation sued it to have it broken up. Microsoft started catering to political interests for support. So, the lawsuit collapsed, and Sun Corporation faded.
Politicians posture, and they use political pressure to force the hand of corporations to bend to their will.
Liz,
Very good point. But can they have it both ways? Can they have their cake and eat it too?
First of all, as you probably know, 1st Amendment free speech only applies to what the federal government may not censor, and via the 14th Amendment, what the individual states may not censor either, not what a private company may not censor. (For example, at risk of losing you job and this blacklisting you, your employer may censor the heck out of you and the 1st Amendment is not applicable). Secondly, as media companies, FB, Twitter, et all could make an argument that the are protected from government censorship by the 1st Amendment Freedom of the Press protections (this may include certain immunities from libel and slander suits brought under state tort law). I am not expert enough right now to know how SCOTUS would rule on this, presumably, first look, case -I don’t know if anybody knows, but this Court LOVES corporate speech.
As far as old fashion radio and network television, the FCC owned and licensed the airways, and thus could regulate some speech on these entities. But how that applies to the interweb, again I am just not savvy enough to know the arguments, either from a legal or a technological standpoint. Maybe you are.
Also, Congress granted these media entities immunity at some point. Again, I only know what I have read in the papers about the reasons for this, but I think it was the typical thought by Republicans that tort immunity is alway a good thing (idiots) and by Democrats that press immunity is always to their benefit (also idiots). You may know more than me on this though.
Finally, anti-trust action is in play here, but this again is not ATT or an oil giant, and they have all the previously mentioned 1st Amendment complexIties to overcome. FB in particular has more money than most countries to battle this with and given the money involved, will fight it back and forth to the Supremes several times over. The ideological question for both political parties does not come down to the simple pablum both parties are feeding their constituencies to generate the narrative that they are the David taking on this Goliath of a capitalistic modern phenomenon.
Ok, that all the opinion that I have on this boogie man. Let’s move on to the next crack pot conspiracy theory.
@ tsalmon.
“Tin foil hat conspiracy land. That’s the real serious problem. You believe stuff that people who either don’t know of what they are talking, or if people who do know it’s a scam and tell you what you want to hear…..Some of you are like children who woke up yesterday and realized mommy and daddy had sex at some point and you just don’t want to believe it or you do believe it and it is ruining your life.”
You know, Tony, you might have the least bit of credibility if you weren’t so dismissive, arrogant and insulting. And especially since you obviously have not bothered to research any of the first-hand evidence for yourself, or watched the hearings and heard the witnesses (with sworn affidavits, listened to the data experts, or heard what people like Zucker (CNN) and his ilk have said from their own mouths (recorded for all to hear), and a multitude of other reasons why over 50 million people think that this election was run like a third-world banana republic. Of course, we’re just stupid, ignorant children with no knowledge of how things are done!
But, as it is, you seem to be the one with your head stuck in the sand, quite happy with the vile state of the DC “swamp,” You seem to be content to remain willfully ignorant of all these issues and pretend it’s just politics as usual. I guess CNN and NYT told you it was all a waste of time, so go on believing their narrative if you want, but we don’t need your scolding, like we’re petulant children who have no knowledge of what’s going on. It’s exactly your kind of passive attitude toward these things that strips our freedoms for tyranny. To imply that we should just shut up and accept this is beyond credulity.
“You know, Tony, you might have the least bit of credibility if you weren’t so dismissive, arrogant and insulting.”
Reverend,
At the risk of sounding patronizing, I am absolutely being patronizing.
You didn’t make a rational argument with any expertise on what you are talking about – you wrote a tribalistic political hit piece based upon sloganeering you heard from known far Right propagandists who events constantly prove keep lying to you but keep lapping it up like spoiled baby pablum.
You obviously don’t know the law. You don’t know history. And you don’t know how government or capitalism works.
“It’s exactly your kind of passive attitude toward these things that strips our freedoms for tyranny.”
My kind? No offense, no instead please take complete offense – even if you had served your country for 20 years in the military in war, Cold War, drug war and peace, you would not have earned the right to question my dedication to freedom or to the Constitution that I swore an oath to defend.
When you quit acting like some poor privileged child who woke up yesterday knowing everything while actually knowing nothing and full of inciting your own self pity and grievance, I’ll quit addressing you as a child, Reverend, when it’s worth the time and effort to address you at all, which is unlikely in the future unless and until you grow up.
My only apology here is to my brother because this is his blog and thus we are both his guests. Sincere apologies Tom. Block me if you wish, but if it helps, know that if you wish, I will avoid even reading this “Reverend” in the future. 😏
@ tsalmon.
My comments weren’t meant to be a legal argument and you know that. You just use this to dismiss my actual points. If you ever cared to investigate the evidence and legal arguments instead of calling us ignorant children, you would read the links on my blog, but you are obviously only interested in pandering and being insulting to me. I’ve had enough of your sanctimonious insults, so I will leave this discussion with you.
Thanks for the re-blog, Tom. It’s rather funny now how the MSM and big tech are being exposed for the partisan hacks they really are. Watching the hearing in Wisconsin today where we find out how Zuckerberg spent over 6 million to make sure democrats voted, including his illegal drop boxes. And here’s Laura Ingraham giving us the history behind how the MSM tried to destroy Trump over the last four years and elected Joe Biden this year. Why anyone would trust these people is beyond me….
@tsalmon
Itchy ears.
👂🧼