Archives For Joe Biden

YouTube Capitulates, Blocks Content Questioning U.S. Election

December 12, 2020 — Leave a comment

Technocrats at Google have silenced YouTube users and content providers, after it surrendered to an avalanche of Leftist demands for the “free speech” platform to enforce “right-think” and “right-speak” about the recent U.S election.

In early November the NBC reported that YouTube was holding firm, and staring down ‘growing criticism’ for allowing boisterous disagreement and analysis.

According to the NBC, ‘YouTube wanted to give users room for “discussion of election results,” even when that discussion is based on debunked information.’

Fast forward to December and YouTube has given in to the pressure, now determining to censure any thought, or spoken word that challenges the election result, the pure farce that is the office of “President elect,” and election fraud.

The New York Times, not without smug adulation for the ‘reversal’ noted that YouTube have decided to backflip on its steadfast decision because it wanted to stamp out ‘misleading information’ and ‘false claims.’

YouTube defended both it’s decision to hold out against criticism for so long, and for its capitulation, saying, in essence, “we’ve let people have had their say. Since a large portion of states of ‘certified their results,’ fraud or no fraud, it’s now time to move on, surrender, and acknowledge Joe Biden’s, legit or not, ascendency to the throne.” (paraphrased from the NYT)

The anti-freedom of speech about-face is a complete 180 from YouTube’s previous policy which allowed commentary on the 2016 election loss by Hilary Clinton to Donald Trump. The most notable of which was Leftist commentary, and false claims about concretely debunked Russian collusion.

With YouTube’s capitulation, Big Tech appears to be moving further towards a system of indoctrination which resembles the one used by the Chinese Communist Party, who, through the inherent Marxist culture of suspicion, with the power of mass surveillance and its Golden Shield firewall, controls how Chinese people use the internet; what citizens see, search, hear, read, or learn.

YouTube’s decision to censure the expression of dissent, analysis and information further reveals the hypocrisy and bias already entrenched in the Technocrat’s billion dollar playground.

They wanted to stop interference in the election, but played election interference for the Democrats.

They were quick to censure President Trump and block reasoned, commentary on COVID-19 treatments, but allowed the CCP’s Lijian Zhao to keep up a tweet falsely depicting an Australian soldier slicing the throat of an Afghan child.

If this image isn’t punishable under Big Tech’s Eula regarding “misleading information” or “hate speech” what is?

Zhao’s false, offensive tweet was posted in November, 30th. It’s still active, hasn’t been fact checked, or tagged. Neither has the account been suspended, and reports to Twitter about it have gone unanswered.

The lack of action taken against Lijian’s false and misleading tweet, strongly indicates that Big Tech globalists are in bed with the CCP.

And like the CCP, they’re now blocking and censuring any content which questions the ideological paradigm.

It would appear that the insidiously wealthy Technocrats of Silicon Valley don’t want you to disagree or question the narrative.

Blocking questions, analysis and opinion about the U.S election is equal to them participating in a cover-up.

It’s worth pondering:

Why would technocrats silence dissent, analysis, free and open debate, if the alleged Democrat “win” was legal?

First published on Caldron Pool, 11th December 2020.

©Rod Lampard, 2020.

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Trump vs. Biden: The Citizen President Vs. The Career Politician

October 28, 2020 — Leave a comment

Ronald Reagan had a unique distaste for career politicians sucking wealth out of D.C.’s tax-payer funded tenure. Most too often more in tune with self-service, than public service. He also had a keen dislike for the faulty, seized-up mechanical inner-workings of Washington.

Reagan was a citizen president. He poked fun at the self-importance of the political class, and wasn’t afraid to include himself in it.

Talking to a gathering of Independent television stations two years after being elected to office, Reagan quipped,

‘”I sometimes think that government is like that definition – that old definition of a baby. It’s an alimentary canal with an appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.”

Reagan came to office at the end of a dismal decade. In large part because Reagan was, as John O’Sullivan also wrote of Thatcher and Pope John Paul II, ‘one of the apostles of hope’, when despair, fear, and doom, was the order of the day.

The 70s were turbulent. Global instability was everywhere.

The mid to late 60s were an open wound. Peace in Vietnam War was won, and then lost by diplomatic fumbling. Americans were confronted with deep state political corruption, and suffered through a series of fearmongering, joyless Presidential leaders from Republicans to Democrats.

The biggest issue of them all was the “Energy Crisis.”

Concerns over the “Energy Crisis” – a decline in domestic energy production, coupled with Lyndon Johnson’s environmental restrictions, and an OPEC embargo (a consequence of America’s support for Israel during the Yom Kippur War), resulting in high oil prices – was echoed by both sides of the political aisle, coupled with apocalyptic projections, and big government solutions to them.

Republican, President Richard Nixon’s proposed energy rationing, was later extended by Democrat, President Jimmy Carter, who, in 1979, told Americans that the “energy crisis” was here to stay. Then tabled a policy around big government control, such as mandatory rationing. (The 1970s version of “the new normal.”)

Carter’s panic rode on the back of urgency, caused by a drop in global oil supply, a consequence of the 1979 Islamist, Iranian revolution.

His six-point plan delivered the same year, included an increase in taxes, ‘mandatory conservation, gasoline rationing’, ‘expanding public transportation’, and creating a new government department to oversee energy rationing, and conservation.

Carter’s speech wove the “energy crisis” into a “crisis of confidence,” telling Americans that they were losing their sense of purpose, and needed to act:

“I’m asking you for your good and for your nation’s security, to take no unnecessary trips, to use carpools or public transportation whenever you can, to park your car one extra day per week, to obey the speed limit, and to set your thermostats to save fuel. Every act of energy conservation like this is more than just common sense, I tell you it is an act of patriotism.”

Carter’s blame shifting by way of his infamous “crisis of confidence” gave Reagan an edge.

Who said in return that,

 “it’s true there’s a lack of confidence, an unease with things the way they are, but the confidence we’ve lost is confidence in our Government’s policies…there remains the greatness of our people, our capacity for dreaming up fantastic deeds and bringing them off to the surprise of an unbelieving world.” (NYT, 14th November, 1979)

Six years after the success of Reagan’s ‘supply-side mix’ policies, which reduced ‘intrusive and overburdening taxation, regulatory, and currency policies’, delivering an effective resolution to the ‘Energy Crisis’, Reagan told administration supporters,

“I’ve always thought that the common sense and the wisdom of the Government were summed up in a sign they used to have hanging on that gigantic Hoover Dam. It said: “Government Property. Do Not Remove.” (29th June, 1987)

It’s often said that we don’t vote for individuals, we vote for political parties, their politicians, and their current policy platform.

The 2020 choice for Americans gives this axiom resonance. 

The Trump/Pence vs. Biden/Harris ballot is a ballot between a citizen President, and career politicians.

Similar in many ways to the context of Reagan vs. Carter in ’79.

One side speaks of hope, freedom, individual responsibility, perseverance, ingenuity, and protections for civil liberties.

The other speaks of crisis upon crisis; of doom, and destruction. From which they preach that only the political class, correct alignment with Leftism, and big government can save us.

Such as, Joe Biden’s “dark winter”, the alleged crises of “institutional racism”, “an unbeatable, Covid-19,” “the new normal of wearing masks, enduring lockdowns, and losing livelihoods in economic shutdowns”; unhealthy fear of conservatives in the supreme court, and apocalyptic “climate change.”

Joe Biden is too entrenched in the game to see that he is the D.C. “swamp”, that leftist activists, are part of the establishment, dancing Carter’s “crisis of confidence”, bureaucratic two-step: the art of blaming others, and looking busy while achieving nothing at all.

On this basis, a vote for Biden is a retreat into darkness. It’s a vote for a “crisis of confidence”; a vote for career politicians who are guarded by leftist activists, and guided by the idolatry inherent within their ideological nonsense.

As Ronald Reagan said in 1964,

“You and I have a rendezvous with destiny.”

“We’ll preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we’ll sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness.” (A Time For Choosing)

References:

[i] Cited by Karl Menninger, 1976. Whatever became of Sin? p.142

[ii] O’Sullivan, J. 2006. The President, The Pope & The Prime Minister, Regnery Publishing

First published on Caldron Pool, 28th October, 2020.

©Rod Lampard, 2020.

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The Morbid Quest to Turn Trump into Scrooge

October 13, 2020 — Leave a comment

One of the first rules about giving is not parading it for all the world to see.

There’s a difference between me sharing with someone that my family and I have financially supported Compassion Australia for nearly two decades, and me boasting about how much money we’ve given to them.

Unless those asking are the tax office, it should be enough to simply state the fact about our giving, without having to prove it with subtotal, decimal, and dollar sign.

For the sake acknowledging it. The exceptions here are small businesses and corporations. Transparency exists for tax purposes. Accountability on giving to charity from a corporate income is as much for shareholders as it is for tax payers, re: the appropriate governing bodies.

Giving from personal income operates by a similar accountability structure, but has a different set of rules when it comes to freedom of information. Anonymity is to be applauded and protected. It’s none of anyone else’s business how much an individual gives from their own personal income.

There’s also a difference between a foundation, set up in a person’s name, giving to charities, and donating money to charities from that person’s own finances.

Businesses never refer to a product, or cash given out to meet a charitable need, as having been given out by the CEO, or his family. They correctly state that the business donated them.

The foundation has to be transparent; the individual doesn’t. He, or she, can remain anonymous.

As Jesus emphasized twice in His criticism of hypocrites posturing righteousness in public for all to see: ‘when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others…when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. And your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.’ (Matthew 6:3-4, ESV)

This criterion makes the morbid quest to squeeze Trump’s wallet for information that could discredit his presidency, all the more lopsided and vindictive.

As The New Yorker’s, John Cassidy made more than clear in his 2016 piece on ‘Trump & the Truth: His Charitable Giving.’ Cassidy’s piece reached hard for the fraud card, up to criticizing Trump for where, when, and how much, Trump was donating of his own money to charity.

Forbes, in a convoluted attempt at the same game, insinuated that then Presidential candidate – whom they estimated to be worth ‘$3.5 billion’ – put revenue before helping ‘kids with cancer.’

Forbes accused Trump of having ‘paid their businesses with charity money.’ Speculating that money changing hands, ‘had more in common with a drug cartel’s money-laundering operation than a charity’s best-practices textbook.’

In short, Forbes acknowledges that the Trump family gives to charity, but isn’t happy about the amount they give, where, or how they do it.

Outlining how Trump’s charities allegedly paid Trump organizations for services rendered. Forbes questions the legal and ethical aspects of Trump Charity organizations, but ultimately feeds into the now far too common dissonance of “hate Trump, because love trumps hate”.

Worth noting. Forbes lists this article as one of their “best pieces of the decade.”

Most recently, Phillip Hackeney penned a piece published by NBCNEWS, responding to news about a Nov. 2019 court ruling by Justice Saliann Scarpulla of the N.Y. Supreme Court, ordering that Trump to pay $2 million in restitution for alleged misuse of Trump foundation funds.

The ruling was based on arguments presented by N.Y. Attorney General Barbara Underwood (who’d boasted about the ruling on Twitter), alleging that the Trump family ‘”illegally” used Trump foundation to further Trump’s political interests.’

The Trump’s responded by noting that all the funds collected were eventually donated to the designated charities – something Judge Scarpulla acknowledged (NBC).

Nevertheless, the Trump family were ordered to pay the $2 million to three charities, presumably pre-chosen by the prosecuting Attorney General.

It was a political win against the President, not an ethical one.

Facebook’s “independent” fact-checkers are doing the same. Flagging posts about Trump’s giving as “missing context” isn’t out of a concern for ethics, or even charities, it’s about partisan political gain.

Snopes rated the above facts as “unproven”, even though they have video of Trump stating: “well, I have a lot of men down here, right now. We have over 100 and we have about 125 coming. So we’ll have a couple of hundred people down here. And they are very brave and what they’re doing is amazing. And we’ll be involved in some form in helping to reconstruct.”

USA Today claims they’re false, and the NY Times (predictably) doubts it.

My criticism isn’t about the attempt to keep Trump accountable for claims he makes about charitable giving. It’s the motive behind the “fact checking”.

By tone, it’s easy enough to discern how the real motivation isn’t to help charitable organizations. The motivation is to sink Trump.

Should said “fact checking” take down someone they don’t like, and win them a Pulitzer in the process? Well, hey, “it’s a dirty job, but somebody’s got to do it.”

It’s rich for any journalist to accuse a family of being ‘vainglorious’. Only to then go looking for glory in a financial shake down of the Trump family’s charitable works.

Had Trump not been running for President, and had there been no potential personal benefit involved, it’s unlikely many in the Leftist dominated mainstream media would even care.

Have the New York Attorney General and others, chased how the $2 million ripped from the Trumps was spent by court designated charities, with the same vigor? 

Have they looked into George Soros’ or the Clinton Foundation’s financial reach in the world of politics with the same scrutiny?

If I were in a diplomatic mood, I’d roll out the uber-understanding-wagon, layer on some sugar-coating, then dismiss the morbid quest to turn Trump into Scrooge, as a true-hearted selfless act of benevolence.

The truth is it isn’t. 2016 was an election year. As is 2020.

These are never-Trump self-serving gestures. Fueled by self-aggrandizement, and tinged with the flare of agitation propaganda, written for a rabid, radicalized mob who’s view of the Trump presidency only comes from the lens that’s been prescribed for them.

I doubt that even if Trump were to give away his entire fortune, those dragging him down, in order to raise themselves up, would find any benevolence in it.

Outbidding wars have their place in charitable auctions.

Outbidding wars over who is the greatest of givers has no place in politics.

For ‘each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. (2 Cor.9:6-7, ESV).

First published on Caldron Pool, 22nd September 2020.

Photo by Photoholgic on Unsplash

©Rod Lampard, 2020

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Woman Refuses to Read from Script at Joe Biden Meet & Greet, Speaks from the Heart Instead

September 10, 2020 — Leave a comment

At a recent meet and greet with Democrat Presidential candidate, Joe Biden, Kenosha resident, Porsche Bennett, refused to read from a script, opting instead to speak what was on her heart.

Bennett told Biden and others present at the Kenosha, Grace Lutheran Church, “I’m just going to be honest, Mr. Biden. I was told to go off this paper, but I can’t.”

Her five-minute testimonial, published by C-SPAN, voiced the need for people to recognize the difference between “peaceful protests” and “violent rioters”.

Bennett addressing Biden, called for less words, more action.

Speaking to the Leftist riots which hurt the black community in Kenosha, she upheld the important distinction between protesting injustice, and unjust mayhem.

“We are heavily angry. There is a difference between a protester and a rioter. Blacks are tired of what’s going on. We came together to help get this community together.”

Her repeated calls for “action”, inadvertently condemn decades long weak Democrat governance, and keep-the-status-quo career politician Republicans. Such as failing – dead horse – programs and poor government policies, in Democrat cities and states where (controversially named) black-on-black crime is high (see Chicago and Detroit).

As Bennett said,

“We have heard so many people say, we will give you this and we will give you that. We have yet to see action.”

She noted the high presence of law enforcement in black communities, but failed to make any connection between police force presence and higher crime rates, asking,

“Why are there more police officers in black neighborhoods? Why are we more targeted than anyone else? We want action. We want to be treated just like everyone else. This didn’t start with Jacob [Blake].”

Bennett then hit out a point which, in context, lands squarely at the feet of Democrats, and the bureaucratic caste, declaring:

“For so many decades we have been shown we don’t matter.”

Racism was the implied cause, but not specifically mentioned.

Bennett’s decision not to read, verbatim, a list of demands written for her by ‘Black Lives Activists Kenosha’, appears to have been a refusal to blame her community’s problems solely on the us vs. them, white against black, ethnic division, and obsession with melanin, which fuels the momentum of the Marxist BLM party-line.

The takeaway message from Porsche is that discrimination remains a primary concern for the black community. Her refusal to read out BLAK’s list of demands also acknowledges that injustice crosses ethnic lines, and melanin – abuse of power by authorities is a community problem. (Even though some are more impacted by this than others.)

As the issue of corrupt law enforcement officers abusing their powers show.

During his visit, Biden talked up education, social development, and local issues. He followed Donald Trump’s lead in visiting the 100k strong small city that was trammeled by radical leftwing riots, in response to the police shooting of Jacob Blake.

The riots were triggered by online footage of an attempt by police to carry out an arrest warrant on Jacob Blake that went horribly wrong. Blake, who was carrying a knife at the time, was shot multiple times from behind after he resisted arrest, and repeatedly refused requests to stand down. Police administered first aid, and Blake survived the incident, but suffered serious injuries.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel essentially described the key difference between Trump and Biden’s visits to Kenosha was the focus on law and order. ‘Law enforcement was a central presence and theme of Trump’s visit, but not Biden’s.’

Porsche Bennett’s free speech address to a leading Democrat, is a stand against special treatment, as much as it is a stand against treating a community group unfairly because of their shade of melanin.

It’s an indictment on poor governance, specifically, that of Democrats, who are elected time and time again in these states and cities. With the hope that promises made about building the community through empowering individuals with opportunity will be kept.

Injustice in response to injustice, escalates injustice.

The essence of Porsche’s testimony is lost if it’s read solely through the white-oppressing-black, Black Lives Matter (the movement) lens.

First published on Caldron Pool, 4th September 2020.

© Rod Lampard, 2020.

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