As we head into the Memorial Day weekend

Making the rounds on social media:

# # #

“Hate speech” and Facebook

image credit: hubpages.com

Petr Svab at The Epoch Times:

While in the United States, most of what Facebook labels as “hate speech” would be lawful to utter publicly because of First Amendment protections, some European countries have laws against “hate speech,” forcing Facebook to take such content offline. Facebook could theoretically make such content only available to users in locales where it’s lawful, but the company has apparently subscribed to the “hate speech” doctrine, tripling its content policing force to some 30,000.

The document with [Candace] Owens’s name was posted into an internal discussion group set up by former Facebook senior engineer Brian Amerige, who left the company due to disagreements over content policing.

“I’m glad to see the group continues to be used to raise awareness inside the company about Facebook’s slippery slope of a content policy,” he said via the Facebook Messenger app. “In a very sad way, it’s comically predictable to see people listed as ‘extra credit’ to watch and investigate. Evolution into the ‘thought police’ is the inevitable result of their dangerous and ineffective approach to promoting the truth.”

The core issue Amerige hit an impasse on with Facebook executives was their insistence on suppressing “hate speech,” which Amerige deemed misguided.

“Hate speech can’t be defined consistently and it can’t be implemented reliably, so it ends up being a series of one-off ‘pragmatic’ decisions,” he previously said. “I think it’s a serious strategic misstep for a company whose product’s primary value is as a tool for free expression.”

Read the rest of this report here. As Thomas Lifson at American Thinker summarizes:

Facebook is being exposed as a naked propaganda organ that ought to be treated by law as a "publisher" legally responsible for the content it hosts, and not as a "forum" — the status it currently enjoys, exempting it from libel laws and other downsides to the content it spreads out to the world.

# # #

If today's media covered the original Tea Party

Cartoonist Gary Varvel at TownHall

Election advice from Down Under

image credit: timesofmalta,com

Many news sites and bloggers covered this weekend's surprise upset election in Australia. Polls predicted a win for Labor but the Liberal party (their conservative party) won re-election. One reader on the thread under the Conservative Treehouse's report was on point:

Query says: 

May 18, 2019 at 7:51 pm 

And here’s a hint for the US. 

Australia does manual voting with paper ballots marked by hand, double counted by the Aust. Electoral Commission, with scrutineers from both parties observing. No hanging shards [chads], no second rate voting machines, no boxes of ballots conveniently found to sway a close election. The US merely needs to scale up the operation. That way there are multiple counting sources and no computer algorithm that someone somewhere has a key to.

# # # 

Next target: Michelle Malkin

image credit: medium.com

Jeffrey Lord has more on Big Tech censorship at American Spectator:

Facebook has censored Michelle Malkin — for protesting censorship.

. . .

Michelle rejects identity politics out of hand, proudly calling herself an “American.” Amen and Amen! But in the Jim Crow-style of the Left she is what the Left loves to call a “woman of color.” Thus her posting standing up for free speech and opposing censorship has to be silenced. Because, like Diamond and Silk, Michelle Malkin is a threat to the totalitarian mind-set of Facebook rulers who have appointed themselves the Gods of who gets to say what and where.

The battle against the totalitarian mindset that is increasingly, vividly targeting conservatives with social media to unperson and de-platform them has now reached out to get Michelle Malkin.

Read the rest here.

# # #

Today: Armed Forces Day

In the United States, Armed Forces Day is celebrated on the third Saturday in May. It falls near the end of Armed Forces Week, which begins on the second Saturday of May and ends on the third Sunday of May.  

That's today, Saturday, May 18.

# # #

Ways to Stuff the Ballot Box

This blog recently reported that 

Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose announced a plan to create a work group that will focus on modernizing the state's voter registration, which would include automatic voter registration. (via Watchdog Ohio)

California serves as a How-To Manual of facilitating voter fraud. Here’s Monica Showalter at American Thinker:

California's election has unsettled many, given the role of ballot-harvesting in supposedly flipping Reagan-country Orange County entirely blue in the last midterm.

But the details rolling out now are getting far more disturbing. RealClearPolitics investigative reporter Susan Crabtree has put together a string of criminalities surrounding the way California runs its elections which makes one wonder if California has adopted the Venezuela Model of electoral governance.

She starts with a sickening new report that California's election was hacked through its "motor-voter" system, the system the state has to register as many votes as possible. If a California resident applies for a drivers license in the state, he (or she) gets registered to vote whether he likes it or not. An applicant can only say 'no' to the registration, not 'yes,' the 'yes' is embedded into the system. It's a set-up that relies on the "honor system" for a voter's claims of valid citizenship to vote and there is no verification. 

Read the rest here. Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose’s website is here, with multiple ways to let him know what you think.

# # #