I’m not usually persuaded by “slippery slope” arguments, deeming them intellectually lazy. But I have to confess to being a little bothered that Twitter is announcing it has the capability, which it is willing to apply, to censor Tweets by country.
Twitter still maintains that “our policy and philosophy about the importance of supporting free expression has not changed.” But it doesn’t answer the question of whether it would have helped Egypt and other regimes suppress the Arab Spring.
It does draw the line at making a devil’s bargain, as Google did for a time, with China.
Twitter offers the example, to make us feel better, of cooperating with Germany’s anti-nazi laws. So… we’re supposed to feel good that they’re willing to suppress fascism, but personally, that’s a bit outweighed by the fact that the first country they come up with as an example is German. No offense, meine Kameraden.
This makes me wonder… something I am not at all happy about is that the most-viewed video (65,281 views) I’ve ever put on YouTube is a clip of neo-Nazis saying “Sieg Heil!” on the State House steps four years ago (and two make it worse, two other, longer clips I shot at that same rally rank fourth and fifth, which really creeps me out). So I guess that would have been censored, had Twitter been in charge — in Germany, at least.
I like that Twitter is trying to be, if this isn’t too much of an oxymoron, transparent about its censorship:
We haven’t yet used this ability, but if and when we are required to withhold a Tweet in a specific country, we will attempt to let the user know, and we will clearly mark when the content has been withheld. As part of that transparency, we’ve expanded our partnership with Chilling Effects to share this new page,http://chillingeffects.org/twitter, which makes it easier to find notices related to Twitter.
All right, technically it wasn’t Newt himself who made the admission, but his “camp.” But until he leaps forward to call his campaign people liars, I’m taking it as an admission from Newt.
(CNN) – Newt Gingrich’s campaign admitted Wednesday night the former House speaker was inaccurate when he claimed his team offered several witnesses to ABC News to refute statements made by Gingrich’s second wife in a controversial interview aired last week.
CNN Chief National Correspondent John King reported the campaign said it only recommended Gingrich’s two daughters from his first marriage, who wrote a letter discouraging ABC to release the interview…
R.C. Hammond, the campaign’s press secretary, told CNN the only people the campaign offered to ABC were the speaker’s two daughters, Jackie Cushman and Kathy Gingrich Lubbers, who make regular appearances for their father on the campaign trail…
How satisfying it must have been for John King to report that story, eh?
By the way, in case you have trouble keeping the relationships straight, these are his daughters by his first marriage. The one making the allegations was his second wife.
Oh, and ABC reported what they had to say the same day as running the ex-wife interview, which was also the same day that Newt unfairly and untruthfully lambasted ABC.
They’re not the Justice League of America, or even the Avengers (although the name sometimes fits). They don’t wear colorful tights. But SEAL Team Six is the closest thing we’re likely to see in real life to a band of superheroes.
KHARTOUM, Sudan — American Navy Seals swooped into Somalia early on Wednesday and rescued two aid workers, an American woman and a Danish man, after a shootout with Somali gunmen who had been holding them captive in a sweltering desert hide-out for months.
Under a cloak of darkness, the Seals parachuted in, stormed the hide-out, killed nine gunmen and then whisked the aid workers into waiting helicopters, Pentagon officials said. The Seals were from the same elite Navy commando unit — Seal Team Six — that secretly entered Pakistan to kill Osama Bin Laden in May, senior American officials said, though the rescue mission in Somalia was carried out by a different assault team within the unit…
I'm pretty sure this is NOT what SEAL Team Six looks like...
They just keep doing these amazing things that no one else seems able to do anymore, outside of the IDF and Mossad, and what have they done that seemed quasi-superhuman since the raid on Entebbe?
You know what else? We don’t know their identities. They could be named Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne, for all we know.
OK, I’ll stop with the riffing on the superhero thing. But I like that we don’t know who they are. It allows us to see them as an extensions of all of us, however unheroic most of us may be.
Only one dark lining in this silver cloud: Ron Paul might get the notion that with these guys active, we can just do away with the rest of our military, and still be fine. And the idea could catch on…
An outfit called Bankrupting America sent out this video last night before the State of the Union address. I didn’t get around to seeing it until today. As the release promises, “The video highlights 3 decades of State of the Union presidential promises on fiscal discipline.”
I find being part of a long, ongoing tradition to be very reassuring, don’t you? See, it doesn’t matter whether they’re Democrats or Republicans — presidents are all pretty much alike. People don’t change. Makes us feel… solid, grounded.
I would say, though, that one of those presidents actually did something about it: Bill Clinton. The video doesn’t mention that. But the fact sheet dismisses it this way: “Despite two years of on-budget surpluses, deficit spending in other years added to the debt.”
Oh, the video also assumes that the only way to reduce the deficit, and the debt, is by reducing spending. Raising taxes, and simply growing the economy to increase revenues, are not considered. In case you didn’t notice that.
What other explanation could there be for siding with the godless news media against a fellow Republican. Oh, Mitt… I’m glad Spiro Agnew isn’t alive to see this…
Now you see, that was mockery — what I just did, in my headline and lede. The Politico item I’m about to quote is headlined, “Mitt Romney mocks Newt Gingrich’s attacks on media.” But what follows doesn’t support that. It’s more like “criticizes” or “corrects” or, perhaps most accurately, “takes exception to.” At least going by the words. Maybe he said them in a snarky way. Maybe I need to see the video…
In any case, here’s what he said:
“It’s very easy to talk down a moderator. The moderator asks a question and has to sit by and take whatever you send to them,” Romney said on Fox News. “And Speaker Gingrich has been wonderful at attacking the moderators and attacking the media. That’s always a very favorite response for the home crowd.”…
But the former Massachusetts suggested that being on the offense against the media doesn’t equate to the more important skill of being able to take on other rivals in the presidential field.
“It’s very different to have candidates go against candidates, and that’s something I’ll be doing against President [Barack] Obama if I get the chance to be our nominee, that this guy has been a failure for the American people, he has not gotten people back to work, internationally he shrunk the power of our military. He has to be a guy who we replace from the White House,” he said.
Charleston’s City Paperrecords another skirmish in the internecine battle between Republicans over America’s role in the world:
After the Republican presidential debate in Myrtle Beach last week, Sen. Lindsey Graham said on Fox News, “I hope people in the country understand that we’re Ronald Reagan Republicans in South Carolina. We believe in peace through strength and we’re not isolationists.”
In an interview the next day, Graham’s fellow South Carolinian Sen. Jim DeMint said on Fox Business,”If we spread ourselves too thin around the world we’re not going to be able to defend the homeland, particularly with the level of debt that we have right now. It’s foolish for us to think that we can have military bases all over the world, spend billions of dollars when we’re going broke back home. It just isn’t going to happen.”
Austerity may be a bad word to Graham when it comes to Pentagon spending, but for DeMint it’s the very definition of conservatism. When Republicans like DeMint and his Senate ally Rand Paul say that Pentagon spending cuts must happen, Republicans like Graham and his Senate ally John McCain call such actions “isolationist.” When Paul was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2010, McCain said he was worried about the “rise of isolationism” in the GOP. When Paul later led the charge against President Barack Obama’s military intervention in Libya, both Graham and McCain trotted out the isolationist label again…
She’s saying there’s a deep, dark secret, yet unknown except by her, that will do in Newt in a fall campaign.
She’s simply emphasizing that, based on what is already widely known — especially among those who served with him — she knows that he won’t be president.
Which do you think it is? Or is it something else? Or nothing?
She lives in a San Francisco environment of very strange fantasies and very strange understandings of reality. I have no idea what’s in Nancy Pelosi’s head. If she knows something, I have a simple challenge: Spit it out.
Rep. James Smith and former Blue Cross CEO Ed Sellers were the recipients. It was James (a.k.a. Capt. Smith) who, in his acceptance speech, called Petraeus “the Eisenhower of our generation.” I concur. There’s no general officer in recent years who combines Ike’s strategic vision, diplomatic skill and leadership qualities to the extent that Gen. Petraeus does.
For his part, Petraeus praised not only James and Ed, but the troops he has felt privileged to lead before joining Central Intelligence. He called them “our new greatest generation.”
Those who serve certainly deserve that sobriquet. The difference is that they are only a tiny sliver of an actual generation, unlike the one that overcame the Depression and beat Hitler and Tojo.
Which only underlines how much the rest of us owe to them, each of them, from the commanding general to the lowliest buck private.
Newt, a.k.a. Maximus the Entertainer, said he won’t participate in any more debates if the crowd isn’t allowed to roar. ”The media is terrified that the audience is going to side with the candidates against the media, which is what they’ve done in every debate… The media doesn’t control free speech. People ought to be allowed to applaud if they want to.”
Here’s a tip, Mr. Big Brain Who’s Written a Bunch of Books: “Media” is a plural noun. So you should say, “The media are terrified” and “The media don’t control free speech.” Just for future reference, professor.
Rush Limbaugh wants Newt Gingrich to ease up on his recent offensive against the media, warning that such theatrics may play well with some conservative voters but will only get him so far in his quest to be the next president.
Yes, that Rush Limbaugh. According to the Daily Caller, the conservative radio host took some time on his show Monday to warn Newt on his favorite debate subject. “The days of being able to keep this momentum going by ripping on the media are over. The standing ovations for taking on the media are over, or they have very short lifespan,” Limbaugh said, adding, “You can only go to the well so many times on this stuff.”
Wow. When Rush tells you to chill, maybe you’d better. Not like he’s a model of self-restraint or anything…
Bret Stephens really sliced and diced the Republican presidential field in today’s Wall Street Journal, in a piece with a headline that does not equivocate: “The GOP Deserves to Lose.” After predicting, as have I, that Barack Obama will win re-election, he goes on to excoriate the challengers:
As for the current GOP field, it’s like confronting a terminal diagnosis. There may be an apparent range of treatments: conventional (Romney), experimental (Gingrich), homeopathic (Paul) or prayerful (Santorum). But none will avail you in the end. Just try to exit laughing.
That’s my theory for why South Carolina gave Newt Gingrich his big primary win on Saturday: Voters instinctively prefer the idea of an entertaining Newt-Obama contest—the aspiring Caesar versus the failed Redeemer—over a dreary Mitt-Obama one. The problem is that voters also know that Gaius Gingrich is liable to deliver his prime-time speeches in purple toga while holding tight to darling Messalina’s—sorry, Callista’s—bejeweled fingers. A primary ballot for Mr. Gingrich is a vote for an entertaining election, not a Republican in the White House.
Newt reminds me less of Claudius than of the fictional Maximus in “Gladiator.” Are you not, indeed, entertained?
And last night, we didn’t even get that. Mitt Romney, looking every inch the sap gladiator whose role in the ring is to approach the headliner hesitantly and poke at him before getting killed (could he have seemed MORE desperate?), dutifully played his part. But Newt, now in the position of front-runner, wouldn’t fight. He didn’t do what he had done in South Carolina, where he recklessly drove the mob wild.
