#TWITTERGATE: Elon Musk Exposes Twitter’s 2020 Election Interference

Posted on | December 3, 2022 | No Comments

One of the things Elon Musk bought for $44 billion was proprietary rights to Twitter’s internal communications and — whoo, doggies! — what a treasure trove it proves to be:

Elon Musk’s Twitter released internal discussions about censoring the Hunter Biden laptop story Friday night via journalist Matt Taibbi.
The documents reveal widespread internal and external concern at the suppression of the story, a decision made without CEO Jack Dorsey’s knowledge and spearheaded by Vijaya Gadde, then the head of Trust & Safety — Twitter’s top censor. . . .
The documents, mostly internal communications from Twitter and emails with external parties, showed widespread unease with the decision and concerns about how it could be explained to lawmakers and the public. . . .

• Trust & Safety chief Vijaya Gadde, long believed to be the driving force of censorship at the company, spearheaded the decision.
• Numerous top Twitter employees, especially from the communications and policy teams — whose job is to maintain relations with lawmakers and the press — expressed concern at the decision.
• Immediate warnings from Twitter’s Washington D.C. contacts followed, including an email from Democrat representative Ro Khanna (D-CA) who warned the decision had generated “huge backlash” on capitol hill, and expressed concerns about Twitter undermining the freedom to publish.

Aside from Rep. Khanna’s communications, which imagined a future in which newspapers would be unable to publish hacked evidence of war crimes, other Democrats reportedly complained that Twitter had not gone far enough in its censorship of the press.

Ace of Spades was critical of the narrative about what is being call Twittergate, and I’ll get to his criticism momentarily, but first I want to make a couple of points of my own. In the long Twitter thread where Matt Taibbi told this story, two messages struck me as “smoking guns”:

https://t.co/j4EeXEAw6F can see the confusion in the following lengthy exchange, which ends up including Gadde and former Trust and safety chief Yoel Roth. Comms official Trenton Kennedy writes, “I’m struggling to understand the policy basis for marking this as unsafe”: pic.twitter.com/w1wBMlG33U

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 3, 2022

The problem with the “hacked materials” ruling, several sources said, was that this normally required an official/law enforcement finding of a hack. But such a finding never appears throughout what one executive describes as a “whirlwind” 24-hour, company-wide mess. pic.twitter.com/aONKCROEOd

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 3, 2022

On the first point, you see the “PRIVILEGED AND CONFIDENTIAL” message that “our teams continue to investigate the origins of the materials included in the reporting” — raising the question: “Why?”

The article by the New York Post — the one that Twitter was suppressing — explained exactly how they had obtained the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop, which had been abandoned at a Delaware computer repair shop. This clearly was not “hacking,” so why the need to “investigate”? What would have led anyone at Twitter to suspect hacking at all? It’s a nonsensical excuse, but is partially explained by the second point: The casual mention that The “existing policy framework” (i.e., the Hacked Materials Policy) originated as a response to “the 2016 election” (i.e., Team Hillary whining that they were victims of “Russian collusion” hackers). So you see that the claim that the Hunter Biden laptop story was the result of “hacking” was directly connected to Hillary Clinton’s claims about her emails being “hacked” in 2016. And, of course, you had Deep State “sources” telling the media that Hunter Biden’s laptop was part of a “Russian disinformation” operation. So this paranoid conspiracy theory — “Russia! Russia! Russia!” — became the basis of censorship.

Which brings us to Point Three:

28. To which former Deputy General Counsel Jim Baker again seems to advise staying the non-course, because “caution is warranted”: pic.twitter.com/tg4D0gLWI6

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 3, 2022

OH EM EFFING GEE! James Baker, an ex-FBI lawyer who was disgraced for his role in the “Russian collusion” hoax, was directly involved in the decision to censor the New York Post story! And notice, also, that Baker seems to be the guy whose messages routinely contain the “PRIVILEGED AND CONFIDENTIAL” header, indicating that he was also the source of the message about “our team” investigating the Hunter Biden laptop story under the Hacked Materials Policy.

So here is the meat of Ace’s rant:

“Mistakes were made.” “Protocols let us down.”
The FBI, which already had the laptop and knew it was real and likely to leak, already told Twitter to expect Russian hack and “dumps,” to prepare them to take just this action. They didn’t have to specifically tell them to suppress the laptop — they’d already prepared the battlespace.
This is bullshit. I’m disgusted and done.

>>>Ace: your take is the blame is being placed on Twitter and not the police state apparatus?

Yes, the FBI is being excused, and it’s being claimed that there was just a breakdown at Twitter, rather than deliberate suppression.
James Baker, General Counsel at twitter, is a former FBI lawyer who himself was disgraced for his role in Russiagate!
He lied about the FISA warrant and helped cover up the fraud perpetrated on the court.
And here he is at Twitter advising them to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story!
Nothing to see here, folks!

Yes, this is what’s revealed, but how is “the FBI being excused” by this revelation? I think Matt Taibbi (and Elon Musk) trust readers to add 2+2 and arrive at the sum of four, which is in fact what both Ace and I have done with these messages. What Musk wanted to show — the purpose of this historic act of transparency — was the inner workings of the decision-making process at Twitter in 2020, and the role of James Baker is very telling. But the fact that Taibbi didn’t editorialize about this aspect of the story in his Twitter thread does not mean that Taibbi (and Musk) are engaged in a “mistakes were made” whitewash. There will be a lot of follow-up and fallout from #Twittergate, I’m sure, and eventually the new GOP House majority will have committee hearings on this sordid mess.

My good friend John Hoge had some thoughts as Taibbi unspooled his tweetstream last night, and I’m sure we’ll discuss this at length tonight at 7 p.m. ET on The Other Podcast.

In The Mailbox: 12.02.22

Posted on | December 3, 2022 | No Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Usual weekend deadlines for the usual weekend posts.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley esse delendam.
OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: The Woke Disaster That Is DC Comics
EBL: Where The Crawdads Sing
Twitchy: Elon Musk Explains What Really Happened With The Hunter Biden Story, Glenn Greenwald’s Take On The “Twitter Files” Does Not Disappoint, and Mark Ruffalo Gets Repeatedly Dragged After Calling For Nationalization Of Twitter
Louder With Crowder: Obama warns Americans about letting their ‘Uncle Joe’ have any responsibilities, Journalismer reveals the most offensive detail about Elon Musk yet, and ‘Put that ego in a white dude…’
Vox Popoli: Shocked, I Tell You, also, The Death of Retail
According To Hoyt: It’s Up, IT’s UP, When Atlas Takes A Coffee Break, and Bad Feminist World Building
Jon Del Arroz: Star Trek/Marvel Writer Peter David Had A Stroke & Needs Your Support
Monster Hunter Nation: WriterDojo S3 E21: Sequels
Gab News: Pray For Ye

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: He got Everything He Wanted but is still Unhappy, Giving Thanks, Podcast #157 – The Hatred of Sin episode, and The Victorian Altar of Baby Sacrifice
American Conservative: A Call for Courage
American Greatness: Florida Divests $2 Billion from BlackRock over ESG Policies, Minneapolis to Award $600,000 to Rioters Who Sustained Injuries During 2020 Riots, and DOE Refuses to Say if Nonbinary Nuclear Waste is Still Getting Paid While on Leave
American Thinker: Advice for Kari, Blake, and Mark, also, Our Republican Leaders Have Failed Us
Animal Magnetism: Rule Five African Energy Friday
Babalu Blog: New penal code in Cuba goes into effect legitimizing the regime’s murderous oppression, Canada needs to stop indulging Cuba’s brutally oppressive and murderous dictatorship, Cuban priest dares to challenge government’s definition of ‘dignity’, and Cuban dictatorship prevents Muslim activist from going on pilgrimage to Mecca
Baldilocks: Still Pushing
BattleSwarm: LinkSwarm for December 2
Behind The Black: Orion fires engine, leaves lunar orbit, FCC puts the squeeze on SpaceX’s Starlink, Martian glaciers below 30 degrees latitude, and Pushback: Kroeger must pay $180K to two Arkansas workers, fired for refusing to support the queer agenda
Cafe Hayek: Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: “Mute applause for free-trade deals”
CDR Salamander: Fullbore Friday
Da Tech Guy: Good News, Bad News about the Twitter Files -Truth and Consequences edition
Don Surber: NYT fights free speech, also, Corporate gun control
First Street Journal: #HelenGym Flaherty wants to do for all of Philadelphia what Larry Krasner has done for law enforcement, also, Progressives can’t see the forest because of all the trees
Gates Of Vienna: The Ingratitude of the Ungrateful, also, The East is Dead
The Geller Report: Supreme Court Halts Student Loan Bailout
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of the Day, I’m Watching The Twitter Files Unfold, and “In Harm’s Way”
Hollywood In Toto: Wingfeather’s Kevin McNally: The Best Stories Entertain, Not Proselytize, The Huge Problem Spirited Could Have Avoided (and Made Families Happy), and Allegation: DNC Helped Knock Conservative Actor James Woods Off Twitter
The Lid: McCarthy Tells J6 Committee He’s Coming After Them When GOP Takes Over
Legal Insurrection: Harvard Prof Tells CEOs to Stop Listening to Their Woke Activist Employees, Latest Promised Layoffs at Embattled CNN Include Chris Cillizza, Feds Pay Journalism Group Hacks/Hackers to Create Anti-Misinformation Software for Social Media, and Democrats Vote to Make South Carolina First 2024 Primary State
Nebraska Energy Observer: Rudi’s Nose
Outkick: Celtics Head Coach Acknowledges Only Jesus, Mary And Joseph As ‘Royal Family’ After Prince, Princess Sat Courtside, Al Michaels Roasted For ‘Checking Out,’ Says What We’re All Thinking About Thursday Night Football, 2022 World Cup Becomes Most-Watched USMNT Group Stage Ever With Fox Sports Breaking Records, Dak Prescott Reacts To Old Photo Of Jerry Jones, Reminds People To Have ‘Grace’, and Mac Jones Tells Matt Patricia That His Offense ‘F*****g Sucks”
Power Line: How Twitter Helped Elect Joe Biden, The Daily Chart: Climate Deaths?, and Thoughts from the ammo line
Shark Tank: DeSantis Not Backing Down On Disney
Shot In The Dark: New Feudalists Vs. The Free Market, also, Downtown’s Back Baybee!
The Political Hat: Firing Line Friday: Resolved: That the Senate Should Ratify the Proposed Panama Canal Treaties
This Ain’t Hell: First woman to serve as submarine XO, Valor Friday, Army recruiting campaign included plan to leverage Call of Duty streamers, Navy warships avoid collision, and Lost Faith- Trust and Confidence in the Military
Transterrestrial Musings: The Media Treats The Fraudster With Kid Gloves, also, Cocaine Mitch
Victory Girls: Zeldin Momentum Begins To Pick Up, also, Twitter Docs Reveal Gadde And Roth’s Control
Volokh Conspiracy: David Lat on Hogan Lovells’ Firing of Semi-Retired Equity Partner for Comments on Abortion and Race
Watts Up With That: Schadenfreuday Funny, also, Green Energy Cabal Blind to Africa’s Medical Horror Show
Weasel Zippers: Gavin Newsom’s Reparations Committee Recommends Handing Out $223K To Every Descendant Of Slaves In California, Biden Looks Dazed And Confused During Event WIth French President, Biden: “I’m Going To Georgia Today To Help Sen. Warren.” Reality: He’s Going To Boston, and MSNBC: Democrats Nominate Better Quality Black People
The Federalist: How Illogical Child Support Rules Can Force Kids Into Poverty, When Media Tried To Turn Netflix’s ‘Wednesday’ Into A Racism Controversy, Its Producer Shut Them Down, Our Military Needs Officers Chosen For Their Qualifications, Not Skin Color, Merrick Garland Ignores Calls For Hunter Biden Probe To Instead Interfere With Trump’s 2024 Chances, and How I Lovingly Guided My Child Away From Transgenderism — And How You Can Too
Mark Steyn: Kanye Hear Me?

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It’s Only Confederate Flags, They Said

Posted on | December 2, 2022 | No Comments

Statue of John Witherspoon at Princeton University

The destructive mobs of organized ignorance (which is to say, the Left) began their crusade by playing upon the anti-Southern prejudices of Yankees. Nearly 30 years ago, one scholar who had followed this “controversy” from the outset explained its origin to me very simply: By the early 1990s, the NAACP was nearly bankrupt, not merely due to mismanagement, but because of the general public opinion that the organization had outlived its purpose. The money had ceased to roll in, and the NAACP was in need of something to help with its fundraising. The public display of the Confederate flag was seized upon as a focus because, the scholar explained, it had a magical effect upon rich Jewish women in certain posh neighborhoods of Manhattan. They wouldn’t lift a finger to help any local blacks — at the time, the Jew-hating clown Al Sharpton had made himself the primary public spokesman for New York’s black population — but the idea of black people being oppressed in the South, oh, they couldn’t write those donation checks fast enough!

Such is the true story of why the crusade to tear down Confederate symbols got started in the early 1990s, more than a quarter-century after the triumph of the civil rights movement, at a time when black people in the South were certainly less oppressed than they’d ever been before. All the allegedly well-meaning people who supported that crusade were fools at best, and perhaps not really as well-meaning as they claimed. But the argument that Southerners should accept this insulting revisionism without protest was always couched with assurances that the demand to take down the Confederate flag was the only concession required to placate the “activists.” In quite the same manner, Chamberlain argued it wouldn’t hurt to let Hitler have the Sudetenland: “Peace for our time!”

We have long since passed the point where any intelligent person expects this radical iconoclasm to end at some logical stopping point. The summer of “mostly peaceful” riots in 2020 saw assaults upon monuments to people who never had anything to do with the Confederacy, except perhaps to oppose it. The very fact that there was a public statue honoring a dead white man seemed to signify in the minds of the leftist mobs that the person so honored must be a RAAAAACIST and therefore the statue was vandalized. And now, in seeking targets for their outrage, the mob has come for an 18th-century Presbyterian:

A Princeton University committee is slated to consider the removal of a prominent statue of Founding Father John Witherspoon in the center of their campus as a result of a petition demanding its removal.
Witherspoon was a member of the second Continental Congress, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and was Princeton’s sixth president.
But he owned two slaves on his farm in New Jersey and voted against a plan for abolition in the state, according to historical records.
A petition, started by three graduate students in the Philosophy Department, states that the “prominent place on campus of the John Witherspoon statue is inappropriate” and calls on the university to “remove it from its pedestal in Firestone Plaza.”
The petition asks that officials replace the statue with an informational plaque that reflects both the “positive and negative aspects of Witherspoon’s legacy.”
The petition adds that the statue, as it stands, pays honor to Witherspoon in a way that ignores his participation in and support for American slavery.
“In such a hub of University life, where people eat, study, socialize, and commute on a daily basis, should students, staff, and faculty not be free from the elevated gaze of someone who held beliefs, and engaged in and defended practices, which we all find so repulsive,” the petition asked.
“Particularly for community members descended from enslaved peoples, the homage the statue does to Witherspoon can be a jarring experience.”

The puerile shallowness of this attack on Witherspoon’s reputation is breathtaking. Born in Scotland in 1723, Witherspoon received his master’s degree from University of Edinburgh at age 16. A staunch Protestant, he was briefly imprisoned during the Catholic-led Jacobite rebellion of 1745. Subsequently gaining prominence as a minister and theologian in Scotland’s Presbyterian church, in 1768 Witherspoon was recruited by American admirers to become president of a certain struggling Presbyterian college in New Jersey. His tenure at what would eventually become known as Princeton University was so successful that perhaps no major institution of learning in the world owes so much to the work of one man. If you’re going to dishonor Witherspoon, you might as well blow up Princeton while you’re at it. (And considering the wretched quality of the “argument” put forth in the student petition, blasting Princeton to smithereens probably wouldn’t be much of a loss.)

The enemies of Witherspoon are anti-American — opponents of our constitutional system of limited government, which directly reflects his influence. Among his students was a certain young Virginian who took away from Witherspoon’s lectures a strong impression of the need for checks and balances in government to restrain tyrannical ambition. But if James Madison was foremost among Witherspoon’s students, certainly he was not alone in achieving prominence:

From among his students came 37 judges (three of whom became justices of the U.S. Supreme Court); 10 Cabinet officers; 12 members of the Continental Congress, 28 U.S. Senators, and 49 U.S. Congressmen.

Did I mention that Witherspoon signed the Declaration of Independence as a delegate from New Jersey? Kind of important, I think.

All of this is to be cast aside, of course, because Witherspoon is a dead white man, and all dead white men are RAAAAACISTS!

It’s almost as if all this is not really about anything else except hating white people. But you can’t point that out, because pointing it will be cited as proof that you are guilty of RAAAAACISM!

Nobody would listen to us Southerners when we tried to warn y’all where this trend was heading, way back in the 1990s. Being vindicated ought to feel good, but it’s a bitter sort of satisfaction, in such circumstances.

In The Mailbox: 12.01.22

Posted on | December 2, 2022 | No Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Thanks to everybody who bought stuff through my Amazon links in November!
Silicon Valley delenda est.

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: Two Total Strangers Save Mom & Kids From Home Invader
EBL: Where in the world is Miguel Almaguer?, also, USA vs. Netherlands
Twitchy: Apple’s CEO Not Eager To Answer Reporters’ Questions About Red China Protests, also, Media Matters Toady Banned “For No Reason” On Twitter
Louder With Crowder: Check out this guy so fed up with China’s lockdowns he’s ready to go all Shaolin kung-fu on the health ‘experts’, Don Lemon becomes surprising voice of reason, and Brute chucks left-wing protesters blocking traffic like they’re a bunch of useless sacks of soy
Vox Popoli: That Which Did Not Kill Them, also, Banzai!

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Snow on the Doorstep, also, Greasy Pole Podcast #23 – The Manosphere is Over episode
American Conservative: Biden’s Poster Boy For Perv Arrested On Felony Charges, also, On Marriage, Betrayal
American Greatness: Lee Z for RNC – Renewing the Nation’s Cause, If You Really Wanted to Destroy the United States, California State Senator Scott Wiener Accused of Sending Hateful Homophobic Message to Himself, and Stop Adopting the Left’s Pseudomorality
American Thinker: Wokism at Arlington, Triggering the Great Reset, and Beware — Michelle Obama’s Book Launch of her 2024 Campaign
Animal Magnetism: Vacation Totty IV
Babalu Blog: The budding love affair between Biden and Maduro, With uniforms donated by China and no textbooks, the school year begins in Cuba, and Cuban dictatorship has spent more on luxury hotels in 2022 than on healthcare or agriculture
BattleSwarm: Jobs For Gender Studies Majors
Behind The Black: Soyuz-2 rocket launches Russian milsat, Webb and Keck telescopes track clouds on Titan, Viking-1 might have landed on a field of Martian tsunami debris, and Today’s blacklisted American: Princeton considering blacklisting John Witherspoon, Founding Father and signer of the Declaration of Independence
CDR Salamander: Galrahn … Rest in Peace
Chicago Boyz: The Art of the Remake, XIX
Da Tech Guy: I blame The Chosen for this Change in Me, The December Indulgence Calendar is out, and The Respect for Marriage Act violates four clauses of the First Amendment
Don Surber: They’ll dump on DeSantis. They already have, also, Liberals sell out unions
Gates Of Vienna: Alberta First, also, The Lying Liars of Pfizer
The Geller Report:  Far-Left Radical Hakeem Jeffries Replaces Pelosi as House Leader, Elon Musk Confirms Twitter ‘Interfered In Elections’, and Major News Outlet Casually Admits China Interfered in the 2022 Election to Boost Democrats
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of the Day, Sonification: Pismis 24, and No “Safe Space” for a Pro-Life Lawyer
Hollywood In Toto: Disney Blinks, DeSantis Snags First Huge Win of 2024 Campaign, also, Pinocchio and the Emperor of the Night Remains a Major Curiosity Item
The Lid: Kanye On Infowars – Insults Jews, Blacks, And His Own Face
Legal Insurrection: Berkeley Law Dean Opposed Dropping LSAT Requirement, Finds Way To Accomplish Same Thing, U. Cincinnati Young Democratic Socialists Demand School Provide Free Laundry, Gun Related Homicides of Black Men Climb to Rates Not Seen Since the 1990s, Stacey Abrams’ Group Attempted To Purchase Multi-Million Dollar Real Estate In “Bizarre Deal”, and Senate Passes Measures to Avert Oncoming Railroad Strike
Nebraska Energy Observer: Better watch out
Outkick: Jemele Hill Desperately Needs You To Buy Her Book, Don Lemon Is Right, Arrest Warrant Issued For Antonio Brown, LeBron James Questions Why Media Asks Him About Kyrie Irving But Not Jerry Jones In Condescending Post-Game Lecture, and Joe Biden Invents New Football Position, Wanders Away with Microphone
Power Line: Sam Brinton: Their physics, their husband, Democrats Tried to Enlist IRS to Attack Conservative Nonprofits, and The Daily Chart: World Cup Half Empty?
Shark Tank: Marco Rubio, Occasional Cortex Come Together In Rare Moment Of Political Harmony
Shot In The Dark: “If You Can’t Stand It, Stand It No Longer”, also, Two Americas
STUMP: Movember 2022: Prostate Cancer – Geography and Race/Ethnicity
The Political Hat: Modern Education Part IV: Groomed Trans By School
This Ain’t Hell: The Ukrainian military used sea drones against Russian ships, Valor Friday comes twice this week, and Americans see the military as too politicized
Transterrestrial Musings: “There Is No Climate Emergency”
Victory Girls: FTX Crypto Founder Claims He Only Sort Of Lied, also, Is Disney Japan Using Pooh To Poke At China?
Volokh Conspiracy: Eleventh Circuit Quashes Trump Effort to Block Federal Government Access to Mar-a-Lago Documents, also, Supreme Court Will Hear Case on Legality of Biden Loan Forgiveness Plan
Watts Up With That: COP27 Greenwishing: Progressive Discontent, also, The World as We Know It Ends If It Can’t Find Its Bearings
Weasel Zippers: DeSantis Rips Apple For Crushing Free Speech In China, US: “Vassal of The CCP”, Dem Rep. Katie Porter: Democrats “Are The Party That Delivers A Strong And Stable Economy”, UN To Hold Annual Event Marking Israel’s Founding As A “Catastrophe”, and Treasury Secretary Yellen Blames Americans “Splurging” For Record-High Inflation
The Federalist: China’s ‘Paper Revolution’ Could Be The Beginning Of The End For Xi, PA County Cements Suppression Of ‘Thousands’ Of Voters By Flip-Flopping To Certify Disaster-Plagued Election, Thank Sam Bankman-Fried For Democrats’ 2022 Ground Game, Fairfax County Schools Used To Assign Homework., and Poll Worker Gives An Inside Look At ‘Complete Chaos’ In Maricopa County On Election Day
Mark Steyn: Sniffing Hair Through the Window, also, So What? (Encore)

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