Social media, surveillance, and your vote

image credit: picstopin.com

Breitbart has reported on the "the extent to which major technology companies such as Google are surveilling their users." But the segment that I hope everyone will watch (it’s less than 4 minutes) is Dr. Robert Epstein’s appearance on Tucker Carlson from (apparently) a few months ago and re-broadcast last Friday. 

Video credit: YouTube [another platform for surveillance] via thelibertydaily.com

Here’s a partial report and transcript from The National Sentinel: 

Dr. Robert Epstein, a research psychologist at the American Institute of Behavioral Research and Technology, joined Carlson to discuss an upcoming presentation on “The Search Suggestion Effect (SSE): How Search Suggestions Can Be Used To Shift Opinions and Voting Preferences Dramatically.”

The researchers looked at the power of Google and Facebook to influence elections over a period of five years and came up with powerful results.

“I can tell you we should be paranoid because what Google and Facebook can do is really mind-boggling,” he told the host.

“For example, if Mark Zuckerberg on election day last year, if he had chosen to press the enter key early in the morning and just sent out a message to Hillary Clinton supporters only saying, ‘Go out and vote,’ that would have sent her an additional 450,000 voters that day with no one knowing that this had occurred. And that’s just Facebook,” he added.

“What Google can do is really off the scale. Our studies show that Google can take a 50-50 split among undecided voters and change it into a 90-10 split with no one knowing they had been manipulated and without leaving a paper trail,” the research continued.

“It has to do with those search suggestions. Literally from the very first character that you type into the search bar you are being manipulated,” Epstein said. “And we’ve done 16 months of experiments. We’ve done all the research now and we know exactly how this works… The threat is absolutely, positively profound.”

Read the rest here or watch the video. Please share with all your social media friends.

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Troy Balderson wins the race

art credit: thebigrocks.com

It’s finally official. Cleveland.com reports:

After millions of dollars spent, a presidential visit, and a lengthy vote certification process, Republican Troy Balderson has become the newest congressman representing Ohio's 12th District --  at least, for the next two months.

Balderson, a state senator from Zanesville, beat Democrat Danny O'Connor, the Franklin County recorder, by 1,680 votes, according to final vote totals from the Aug. 7 special election released Friday by elections officials.

. . .

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UPDATE: Cleveland.com ran an editorial applauding Secretary of State's John Husted "timely demolition of fraud rumors in 12th District results." This blogger was suspicious.

Priorities in the Age of Trump

one version of Donald Derangement Syndrome

James Delingpole at Breitbart published an article, “Trump Derangement Syndrome Is Making Conservatives Lazy, Cowardly and Stupid”. He’s sorting through Never Trumpers, conservatives, and semi-conservatives. He concludes:

Let’s get this straight. We – at least the vast majority of us – on the side of the argument that Donald Trump is currently representing believe in stuff like: national borders, free speech, protecting citizens’ interests, equality of opportunity, lower taxes, smaller government, democratic accountability, the family, personal responsibility, rising standards of living, property rights, the rule of law, checks and balances, the Constitution, liberty. There is nothing in any of this we should feel awkward or guilty about. It does not make us Nazis. Or even semi-Nazis. Or alt-right. Or any of the other pejorative terms which – according to our opponents – make it wholly acceptable to punch the teeth out of anyone in a MAGA baseball cap.

Trump Derangement Syndrome has caused some conservatives – not all of us, thankfully – to lose sight of why it is that we fight.

We fight because we’re right. And yes – as Trump is one of the few conservative presidents to get – it really is that simple.

I am posting and linking since I expect it will resonate with most Cleveland Tea Party members. Full article is here.

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A bad idea from the Cuyahoga County Council

art credit: gamesageddon.com

Cleveland Tea Party would not have a role to play in, say, the ongoing targeting of the Colorado baker who won’t produce a cake celebrating gay marriage or transgendering. However, one of the three core Tea Party values is limited government, and the Cuyahoga County Council is planning to take it upon itself to further meddle in the lives of residents. Our friends at Ohio Value Voters sent out the message below (warning: Cringe Alert). Mark your calendar, make some phone calls, or send messages:

Re: Cuyahoga County Human Rights Commission 

Residents of NE Ohio

Public Testimony Requested

Wednesday, September 12^th at 5:00 Pm

The Cuyahoga County Council has been quietly working on legislation to establish a county-wide "Human Rights Commission" that will affect every city, resident, business, and church in the county.  The three-person commission is intended to hear ALL cases of discrimination in Cuyahoga County relative to sexual orientation/gender identity.  LGBT citizens will be provided legal assistance paid for by our tax dollars.  This piece of legislation hurts business, puts our safety at risk, and punishes people of faith.   This ordinance permits biological men, who consider themselves to be women, to enter a woman's bathroom or locker room in "all places of public accommodation."

On Wednesday, September 12th at 5:00 pm the County Council of Cuyahoga County, Ohio will hear public testimony against Ordinance No. O2018-0009 sponsored by: County Executive Budish and Councilmembers Brady, Miller, Houser, and Simon.  

Resources/Articles and ACTION items: 

Click Here For Council Meeting Instructions [includes free parking info]

Action Item: Tell the council (by phone/email) to Vote NO on Ordinance No. O2018-0009. Click Here for a list of Phone Numbers/Email Addresses of Council Members

Read this article, "How to think about Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (SOGI) Policies and Religious Freedom," by Ryan T. Anderson

Resource: List of Gender Identities & Pronouns

The above linked Heritage Foundation article is good but rather long. I found a shorter related article – and it pulls no punches – zeroing in on “Marxism and Marriage” at American Thinker here. 

I also checked the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission which already has jurisdiction over claims related to LGBT; see here. The Cleveland Field Office website is here; its page for filing a charge of discrimination is here. So the Cuyahoga County Council's intended power-grab can also be filed under the Department of Redundancy Department.

I’ll re-post the alert again after Labor Day.

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Preview: Cleveland Air Show over Labor Day weekend

photo credit: Pat J Dooley photography

Click here for the 2018 Cleveland Air Show website, which includes preliminary schedules, ticketing, and general information. And this year, it’s the Blue Angels.

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Teaching history in England and America

art credit: indianexpress.com

  

James Delingpole’s “History Teaching Has a Dangerous Left-Wing Bias” is mostly about teaching the history of England, but he references NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s put-down of the USA from a day or two ago: “We’re not going to make America great again. It was never that great.” 

The teaching of history in America more and more shares Gov. Cuomo’s guilt-ridden perspective. And I am thinking of all the Confederate and Founding Father statues and plaques that are being torn down, which will ultimately result in history text books filled with blank pages and lies. Delingpole concludes his article:

Apart from being objectively untrue – the historical achievements of the Anglophone empires and their various scientists, inventors, writers, painters, explorers and warriors far, far outweigh their defects – this approach is also insidiously dangerous.

There’s a reason why young Victorians were raised on GA Henty novels with titles like Under Drake’s Flag and Winning His Spurs. The narrative of national pride filled young men and women with the confidence to go out and achieve extraordinary things on behalf of their great nation.

There’s a reason, too, why young Americans used to pledge allegiance to the flag.

We’re encouraged by the modern left to pour scorn on such outmoded jingoism. But it was nothing of the kind: just people uniting in love of their country and recognising that it was a cause worth fighting and dying for. The less you value your nation’s history and traditions, the less you feel they are worth defending. Such negativity is a recipe for decay and defeat. It’s so obvious, so well-documented that only a left wing historian could be deluded enough to imagine otherwise.

The full article is on Breitbart here.

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E-Censorship

 art credit: 2012patriot.wordpress.com

Most days I visit several news aggregators to find reports, analyses, and commentary. A couple of weeks ago, one of the aggregators, Lucianne.com, was down for several days. It wasn’t the first time it went down, and I wonder about why it happened. For the last two days, another aggregator, Politipage, has gone blank. Hmm. Maybe these were just technical crashes. Both these aggregators lean conservative.

In what are probably related developments, some prominent conservative voices have been demonetized or blocked from Facebook or other platforms. Among them are Diamond and Silk, Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer, and Avi Yemini.

Glenn Reynolds (Mr. Instapundit) has an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal today titled “When Digital Platforms Become Censors: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other tech giants say that they’re open forums. What happens when they start to shut down voices they consider beyond the pale?”:

Call 2018 the “Year of Deplatforming.” The internet was once celebrated for allowing fresh new voices to escape the control of gatekeepers. But this year, the internet giants decided to slam the gates on a number of people and ideas they don’t like. If you rely on someone else’s platform to express unpopular ideas, especially ideas on the right, you’re now at risk. This raises troubling questions, not only for free speech but for the future of American politics and media.

That’s his opener. The rest of his commentary is here.

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