Marco Rubio is all in

The Global Engagement Center, a State Department unit that called out Russian and Chinese propaganda campaigns and became a MAGA boogeyman, has been shut down. Team Trump is promising that it’s just the start of an examination of alleged censorship during the Biden administration.

[...]

Secretary of State Marco Rubio called the move “a crucial step toward keeping the president’s promise to liberate American speech” in an op-ed for the right-wing site The Federalist. Critics say it’s part of a larger effort by the Trump administration to withdraw from a decades-long contest of ideas and information with America’s adversaries.

  Wired

Up is down. Black is white. Shuttering anti-propaganda function is free speech.

In early February, Attorney General Pam Bondi disbanded the Justice Department task force on covert foreign influence and radically narrowed enforcement of the law that outlawed secretive propaganda for overseas regimes. The Trump administration gutted the parent organization of the Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, and Radio Free Asia, which aimed to provide news and demonstrate the value of a free press in regions of the world where both were often in short supply. [...] “Most shameful moment at the department since the purges of the 1950s,” one State Department official, who was granted anonymity because they are not authorized to talk to the press, tells WIRED.

[...]

Sometimes, with grants of just a few thousand dollars, it funded the work of journalists in countries targeted by the Putin regime. “We were really focused on building the capacity of folks that were already doing that good work and making sure that they had the platform to continue to tell their stories—to tell the truth in an environment that was trying to take that from them.”

We won't have people telling the truth. And neither will Putin.

I used to believe Matt Taibbi

Now I wonder how smart he is.  Never go up against Mehdi Hasan.  He'll eat you alive.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 04/08/2023:

Taibbi actually thought he could hold his own against Mehdi Hasan.  March 25:

Pathetic, Matt.

The point is his followers believe him

Yeah, I missed that, too.  

Also, stollen is a German fruit bread often served at Xmas.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Self-owning Republican committee

Despite their own past behavior, Republicans are using their newfound control of the House to probe Democrats’ and federal law enforcement agencies’ interaction with Twitter.

[...]

WHEN THE WHITE House called up Twitter in the early morning hours of September 9, 2019, officials had what they believed was a serious issue to report: Famous model Chrissy Teigen had just called President Donald Trump “a pussy ass bitch” on Twitter — and the White House wanted the tweet to come down.

That exchange — revealed during Wednesday’s House Oversight Committee hearing on Twitter by Rep. Gerry Connolly — and others like it are nowhere to be found in Elon Musk’s “Twitter Files” releases, which have focused almost exclusively on requests from Democrats and the feds to the social media company. The newly empowered Republican majority in the House of Representatives is now devoting significant resources and time to investigating this supposed “collusion” between liberal politicians and Twitter.

  Rolling Stone

Ooops.

The Trump administration and its allied Republicans in Congress routinely asked Twitter to take down posts they objected to — the exact behavior that they’re claiming makes President Biden, the Democrats, and Twitter complicit in an anti-free speech conspiracy to muzzle conservatives online.

[...]

But during both the Trump and Biden presidencies, these types of moderation requests or demands were routinely sent to Twitter by the staff of influential GOP lawmakers — ones with names like Kevin McCarthy and Elise Stefanik.

[...]

The obvious irony here is, the sources note, that Republican leaders and elected officials have long been committing precisely the kind of “government interference” that they are now investigating, fundraising off of, and accusing Democrats and the so-called anti-Trump “Deep State” of perpetrating. Some of the loudest conservative and MAGA voices on Capitol Hill — who’ve been endlessly demanding taxpayer-funded, high-profile investigations into Big Tech “bias” and “collusion” — were themselves engaged in the behavior they now claim is colluding.

I wonder if Matt Taibbi and Jonathan Turley - or indeed, Elon Musk himself - will have anything to say.

Other posts on this insane flop of a committee can be found here and here.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 09:24 am:

UPDATE 03:18 pm:  Well, we've heard from Turley now...

Maybe Taibbi will have something to say about that.

Katie, bar the door...

Too bad the yelling and screaming clips are what they're after - the fundraising value is priceless.

And wrapping it up...

The Age of Angry Torpor has descended on us all.

[...]

The House Committee on Oversight and Accountability had its first chance to air out its chuckleheaded conspiracy tales about Twitter's "suppression" of the news about Hunter Biden's laptop. It took up most of the legislative day on Wednesday.

[...]

When Rep. Lauren Boebert threatened a witnesses with arrest and prosecution for...something...and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez asked Comer if he didn't think this violated committee protocols on witness intimidation, Comer fumbled and foozled around until an aide at his shoulder prompted him to reply, “We don't agree there was witness threatening.” (He couldn't come up with that on his own?)

[...]

Comer put a blow-up of the NYP front page in question behind his chair. That story speculated that the laptop contained evidence that Joe Biden had gotten a Ukrainian prosecutor fired because the man was closing in on one of Hunter's business partners. This, you may recall, was the primary red herring Republicans tossed out as an alternate theory of the crime during Impeachment No. 1. One person who remembered that quite clearly was rookie Rep. Dan Goldman, whose previous gig was lead counsel for the House Judiciary Committee in that very matter. He took Comer out for a walk.

  Charlie Pierce

Continue reading.

We are failing as a nation

Ask him again.

h/t Stephen

Yep, another Karl Rove acolyte.

This troll is the philosophical heir to Joseph McCarthy.  And unfortunately, she has plenty of company in the current GOP.

Here's her problem with Roth:  "He permanently banned my Twitter account for a year during my election."  

Leave aside how a year is not permanent, this woman is the worst kind of troll - an anti-semitic rabble rouser.  Roth can expect death threats, and maybe attempts.

He has already been harassed to the point of selling his home and moving.  

[Roth] began by saying that the "Twitter Files" also affected more junior employees at Twitter, and that staff as far away as the Philippines were "doxxed, had their families threatened, and experienced harm equal to or greater than what I've experienced."

He added: "But concurrent with the 'Twitter Files,' Elon Musk also made the decision to share a defamatory allegation that I support or condone pedophilia and this lie led directly to a wave of homophobic and antisemitic threats and harassment against me of which Twitter has removed vanishingly little.

  MSN

The "Committee" is now hounding him over his role at Twitter to the tune of Joe McCarthy's House UnAmerican Activities Committee in the 50s. We're in another very dark period of our country's history. I don't know how we get out of it.

UPDATE 10:52 am:

Hunter Biden may have some shit to answer for, but I do hope his lawyers make this GOP obsession very costly.

The Twitter (Hunter Biden laptop) hearing is as crazy as you might have assumed it would be

Fucking lunatic.

Also, fucking lunatic.

Donalds is adding confirmation to the perception he gave during the Speaker of the House fiasco that he is indeed a fool.

Apparently, though, some Democrats are joining the fray.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 07:02 pm:

UPDATE 02/09/2023 :  Another Moskowitz clip...

Moskowitz is about to become another focus of the MAGA Menace.

UPDATE 02/09/2023 11:34 am:

UPDATE 02/10/2023:

I didn't realize until now that I have two previous posts on Clay Higgins.  From 2020, where he claims his wife had a premonition dream he thought worthy of tweeting, and 2019, where we learn he resigned from two police departments before he could be charged with brutality and breach of ethics, was married four times and was sued for $140,000 in back child support.

UPDATE 02/11/2023:

I think we all saw this coming for Moskowitz.

The story behind Musk's Twitter crusade

The Hunter Biden laptop scandal.

Warning: This is a Jonathan Turley article.

As many of us have long suspected, there were back channels between Twitter and the Biden 2020 presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) to ban critics or remove negative stories.

[...]

Obviously, bias in the media is nothing new to Washington; newspapers and networks have long run interference for favored politicians or parties. However, this was not a case of a media company spiking its own story to protect a pal. It was a social media company that supplies a platform for people to communicate with each other on political, social and personal views. Social media is now more popular as a form of communications than the telephone.

Censoring communications on Twitter is more akin to the telephone company agreeing to cut the connection of any caller using disfavored terms. And at the apparent request of the 2020 Biden campaign and the DNC, Twitter seems to have routinely stopped others from discussing or hearing opposing views.

[...]

Musk’s dumped Twitter documents not only confirm the worst expectations of some of us but feature many of the usual suspects for Twitter critics. The documents do not show a clear role or knowledge by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. Instead, the censor in chief appears to be Vijaya Gadde, Twitter’s former chief legal officer who has been criticized as a leading anti-free speech figure in social media.

[...]

[T]he New York Post was suspended from Twitter for reporting on the Hunter Biden laptop scandal. Twitter even blocked users from sharing the Post’s story by using a tool designed for child pornography. Even Trump White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany was suspended for linking to the scandal.

[...]

Some Twitter executives expressed unease with censoring the story, including former global communications VP Brandon Borrman, who asked, “Can we truthfully claim that this is part of the policy?” [FBI general counsel James] Baker jumped in to support censorship and said, “It’s reasonable for us to assume that they may have been [hacked] and that caution is warranted.”

[...]

These documents show a back channel existed with President Biden’s campaign officials, but those same back channels appear to have continued to be used by Biden administration officials. If so, that would be when Twitter may have gone from a campaign ally to a surrogate for state censorship.

[...]

The incoming Republican House majority has pledged to investigate.

  The Hill

And this is why Trump wants to suspend the Constitution.

“So, with the revelation of MASSIVE & WIDESPREAD FRAUD & DECEPTION in working closely with Big Tech Companies, the DNC, & the Democrat Party, do you throw the Presidential Election Results of 2020 OUT and declare the RIGHTFUL WINNER, or do you have a NEW ELECTION?,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, the Twitter alternative that he founded.

“A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution,” he added. “Our great ‘Founder’ did not want, and would not condone, False & Fraudulent Elections.”

  MSN

Which this clearly was not.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

UPDATE:

thread

UPDATE:

Because it puts fuel on the base fire.

UPDATE:

And none of this is news.

Twitter’s former CEO Jack Dorsey admitted that [its ban on the laptop story] was a mistake over a year ago.

  Bulwark

UPDATE:  When you're MAGA and you've lost Sebastian Gorka...

UPDATE:

UPDATE: