VIDEO: Tucker Carlson on the untouchability of AOC

Fox News has not (yet) put itself beyond the pale. They still have Tucker Carlson and let's be thankful for that. Mr Carlson had some trenchant comments last Friday on AOC (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, if you somehow didn't know) sending Inspector Knacker after a little-known California podcaster named Ryan Wentz.

Mr Wentz, who goes by the Twitter handle @queeralamode [tells you something right there. Ed.] isn't one of our extremists, but a left-wing, anti-war activist, who dared to post a video of some vague remarks made by AOC on the subject of Israel and Palestine, which he called "incredibly underwhelming."

His failure to recognize Ms O-C's expertise and insight wasn't appreciated by the erstwhile leader of all progressive Forces for Good, who sent the CHiPs around to his apartment California last week to warn him that he'd better stop "threatening" her. Mr Carlson picks up the story....

   

According to the New York Post, AOC's office has asked the concerned public to help identify critics in the past. On February 4th, her campaign e-mailed supporters asking them to "scan your social media to find posts with misleading information" about the congresswoman, and "use the built-in report feature to flag them for moderators."

Walt considers himself warned, and promises to refrain from any further comments about Ms O-C, unless she [Constraints of space force us to delete the rest of this post. Ed.]

Telling the truth about mass migration is "hateful conduct", sez Twitter

Let's start with a report on CBC News of a speech made recently by Emmanuel Macron, the tiny perfect leftist President of France, about the problem of Islamic terrorism in his country.

The chief surrender-monkey blames it all on the failure of the French people to welcome and accommodate the millions of Muslims who have flooded into his country to take advantage of the French spirit of Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité. 

M Macron gave his speech during the first major terrorism trial in Paris after the attacks against the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish grocery store in January 2015, the co-ordinated killings in cafés and the Bataclan theatre in November 2015, and finally the truck assault in Nice on Bastille Day of 2016. 

The combined death toll from these Islamic terrorist attacks (I'm saying it again lest we forget) was more than 230. Most of the attackers were French-born, but all saw themselves as Islamist jihadis. What will France do with them? Send them to the shitholes of the Middle East and North Africa from which they came? Errr, no. Too late for that.

The Muslims are there now, there to stay. What to do with the 1000s of Islamic extremists now entitled to remain in Europe forever is a real problem for France -- but not just France. "Mass migration absolutely destroyed Europe. Italy, France, Sweden and Germany took in tons of migrants who never assimilated. Rapes, murders, and other heinous crimes abound."

That's not Walt speaking, although I agree. Those are the words of Lauren Witzke, the Republican candidate contesting one of the Senate seats in Delaware. Ms Witzke went on to say "I will end ALL immigration into the US for ten years." For this sin against political correctness, Twitter locked her account! Messages like that, the social media giant says, are "hateful conduct". Well, at least they didn't call it "hate crime". Not yet, anyway.

Twitter went on to warn warning the Senate candidate that repeated violations would result in the termination of her access to the platform. In a comment to Breitbart News, Ms Witzke promised swift action on the issue of tech censorship if elected to the Senate. Said the Senate hopeful, "This is yet another example of Twitter, which is partially owned by a Saudi Arabian prince, interfering in American elections."

Sez Walt, good on yer, Lauren! If I lived in Delaware, you'd have my vote!

Note from Ed.: Am I the only one to notice a strong resemblance between Lauren Witzke and People's Party of Canada star Laura-Lynn Tyler Thompson? How come the lefties can't get good-looking women like this to run for them? Am I being sexist to point this out?

UPDATED + VIDEO ADDED: Washington Post reveals its true colours

The "greats" of the lamestream media, such as the New York Times and the Washington Post, make a big deal out of proclaiming their neutrality when "reporting" (read: writing opinion pieces described as news reports) on American politics. Since last year's presidential election, no-one with any smarts at all believes them, but it's still good to see proof of their pro-Democrat/anti-Trump bias every now and then.

Here, for your delectation, is an excerpt from an "analysis" (read: you have to believe this because I'm smarter than you are) piece by (((Kayla Epstein))) headed "Trump’s Twitter deactivation couldn’t have come at a worse political moment for the platform", published today, 4/11/17. Except for the substitution of "Twitter" for "the platform") in the first line, I have copied it exactly as it appears online. You can look it up.

Senator Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) raised the question of [Twitter]’s political neutrality during a Senate Judiciary hearing with Facebook, Twitter, and Google on Oct. 31. The purpose of the hearing was to investigate malicious Russian activity on these platforms during the 2016 election, but Cruz took the conversation further.

“Given the percentage of news and political information that Americans receive online through social media or through other online avenues, the prospect of Silicon Valley companies actively censoring the speech or the news content is troubling to anyone who cares about a Democratic process with a robust First Amendment,” Cruz told representatives from the tech giants.

Cruz cited specific controversial incidents involving Google, Facebook, and Twitter, including Facebook’s Trending news team, and a temporarily suspended Twitter ad by Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), a candidate for Senate.

Did you catch the play? I'll bet you Ted Cruz didn't mean to say "Democratic" with a capital D. More likely he meant "democratic", as in having a choice between competing ideologies or parties. Lifetime pct .993.

VIDEO ADDED 10/11/17: Chris Wallace (American television anchor and political commentator who is the host of the Fox Broadcasting Company/Fox News Channel program Fox News Sunday) admits that when he says the media are biased against him "Trump may have a point".

FURTHER READING (ADDED 24/11/17): "Washington Post reporter caught plotting liberal agenda with billionaire George Soros", Fox News 24/11/17.

"Racist and vulgar messages" appear on Habs Twitter account

Walt is probably the last person on earth who doesn't have a Twitter account. Famous and not-so-famous people have one. Famous organizations too, including every sports club you ever heard of and some you never heard of. Those you've heard of would of course include the Montréal Canadiens. Bien sûr!

The Habs Twitter feed is very popular too. Just yesterday, while Walt was returning from the birthplace of the NHL, the announced that it had reached the million follower mark, the third team in the league to have reached that elevated plateau. (The other two are the Chicago Blackhawks and the Toronto Maple Leafs.)

To thank those million-plus fans, le CH posted, at the hashtag #CanadiensMTL1M a special message with a little surprise. Well, perhaps not so little, because 1000s who clicked on the hashtag saw this:

Unfortunately, this picture -- all over the Internet or at least the Canadian part of it today -- has been cropped so that we can't see the number of "likes" and "retweets". Not so this next one.

Whatever can it all mean? The Gazoo's Dave Stubbs (head cheerleader for P.K.Subban) has accused Poor Len Canayen of being racist for daring to criticize the alleged defenceman, who happens to be black. See "Is Habs' coach Therrien to blame for blaming P.K. Subban?" (WWW 18/2/16) and "Gazette's Jack Todd on the 'Subban–Habs fault line'" (WWW 23/2/16). Walt [and Ed.! Ed.] hasten to point out that Poor Len had nothing to do with these "racist and vulgar messages". He would never call P.K. a n1gger just because he dresses like a pimp and carries on like an NFL player showing off for the "homes".

The offending pix have been taken off the Canadiens' Twitter account. The club has apologized and promised that there will be no further lapses into political correctness.

@POTUS draws negative (even racist!) comments. Surprised?

Walt has never done Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or any of the other anti-social media. (I call them that because it seems most of the people posting on FB etc are so busy posting that they have no time to socialize with anyone in person. See Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, by Robert D. Putnam (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000). But I digress...)

When I heard, earlier this week, that the Prez -- Barack Hussein Obama hisself -- had his very own Twitter account, @POTUS, I was sorely tempted to sign up. A White House aide said @POTUS would "serve as a new way for President Obama to engage directly with the American people, with tweets coming exclusively from him."

Since Mr. 0 never returns my phone calls, I figured I could send him a message on Twitter. Not that he'd read it personally, of course, but it would make me feel better for having sent it. Seems like hundreds of thousands of other people had the same idea. The New York Times reports today that it took only a few minutes for Mr. Obama’s account to attract "racist, hate-filled posts and replies". Gee! Whoda thunk it?!

Posts addressed him (the Times continues) with racial slurs, called him a monkey and one had an image of the President’s neck in a noose. The posts reflected the racial hostility toward the country’s first black President that has long been expressed in stark terms on the Internet, where conspiracy theories thrive and prejudices find ready outlets. But the racist tweets are different because now that Mr. Obama has his own Twitter account, the slurs are addressed directly to him, for all to see.

Within minutes of Mr. Obama’s first, cheerful tweet -- "Hello, Twitter! It’s Barack. Really!" -- Twitter users lashed out in sometimes profanity-laced replies that included exhortations for the President to kill himself and worse. One person posted a doctored image of Mr. Obama’s iconic campaign poster, instead showing the President with his head in a noose, his eyes closed and his neck appearing broken as if he had been lynched.
Instead of the word “HOPE” in capital letters as it appeared on the campaign poster, the doctored image had the word “ROPE.”

Another Twitter user responded to the president with just two words: “Black monkey,” a comparison that was not uncommon in the posts addressed to Mr. Obama. “Get back in your cage monkey,” another person wrote.

What Walt (and the Times) finds surprising is that anyone finds this surprising. The liberals claims that the election of Mr. 0 proves that American society is now "post-racial". The Prez hisself says so. Political correctness may restrain politicians, the meeja and just others who don't want to be called racists from saying what they really think, but when you open a Twitter account that gives people a forum for freedom of speech, look out! Let's see how long @POTUS lasts.

Canuck cabinet ministers not really up for official bilingualism

A person who speaks many languages is multilingual.
A person who speaks two languages is bilingual.
A person who speaks only one language is... English!

That joke has been around for centuries. Of more recent vintage is the one about the southern Baptist preacher whose argument for having English as the only official language of the USA was "If English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for me!"

You hear a lot of such talk in Armerica, as the use of Spanish in day-to-day life spreads north and east, buoyed on the wave of immigrants (legal and otherwise) from south of the border. Those who insist that the USA should have only one official language -- English -- point to Canada as an example of the confusion and cost of bilingualism.

For those who don't know [most Americans. Ed.], Canada has two official languages -- English and French. Notice that I didn't say "national languages". That's because the word "national", common to both English and French, has slightly different meanings. The French "national" refers to ethnicity -- Frenchness -- and is thus a heavily loaded word in the multicultural mess that Canada has become.

But never mind. Bilingualism has been a principal policy of the Canadian government for half a century, and has given a certain style to all communication, written and oral, by public bodies and officials. The style is sometimes called "AirCanada-speak", from the days when AirCan was the national -- oops, can't say that -- the state-owned airline. Here's an example. "Veuillez boucler vos ceintures de sécurité, please fasten your seatbelts." -- all said in one breath. Which language would be spoken first depends on whether the closest city is in a French-speaking or English-speaking area. Really.

But that's the law in Canada! And there's even a Commissioner of Official Languages/Commissaire aux langues officielles to make sure that all public pronouncements are made in both languages. Not kidding. Check out his website.

Uttering platitudes in English and French simultaneously is no biggie for Canuck Prime Minister Steve Harpoon, whose dogged determination to learn the language on the other side of the corn flakes box has served him well. But some of his top cabinet minister apparently flunked high school French and can't be arsed to take remedial lessons.

Walt refers to "Johnboy" Baird and "Skinny Tony" Clement, who preside over the Foreign Affairs Ministry and Treasury Board respectively. Messrs Baird and Clement love to demonstrate their coolness and connectedness by Twittering and tweeting about this, that and the other. [Especially "the other", in the case of "Nancy" Baird. Ed.] But they do so mostly in English, since that's the only language in which they are more-or-less fluent. Too bad for them, because the language police are on their case!

Jason Fekete, writing in the Ottawa Citizen, tells us that the Commissioner of Official Languages is trying to determine whether cabinet ministers, on their personal Twitter accounts, have responsibilities under Canada’s language laws when tweeting on government business or posting information for their departments. "The outcome of the investigation, could put a chill on federal ministers’ use of social media and erode the spontaneity of communicating directly, in real time, with the public."

What do the ministers concerned have to say? One of the most government's most prolific tweetie-pies, Michelle Rempel, the Minister of State for Western Economic Diversification, told the Citizen, "My dept. is fully compliant (tweets in both languages) – as it should be. Press releases are the same. While my French is coming along nicely, and I have a great desire to be fully proficient in it, English is still my primary language and as such tweets from my personal account reflect the same."

Mr. Clement went a little farther, tweeting, "I think it’s a ridiculous waste of time. I sometimes tweet in French, much in English. If he [the Commissioner] proposes to overlord me [sic], I will quit Twitter." Dare we hope!

Walt's advice to all of them: If you can't write coherently in proper English, don't write at all. As Mark Twain said, "It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt."

"Slacktivism" -- idle, impotent and irrelevant

Malala's doing it. Hellery Clinton's doing it. Michelle Obama's doing it.

Everybody's doing it. Except Walt. [And Ed. Ed.]

What's "it"? Why tweeting #BringBackOurGirls of course! The reference is to the dastardly kidnapping of close to 300 Nigerian schoolgirls by the Boko Haram.

These guys are Islamic extremists by the way. Walt points that out because the PC media, politicians and pundits seem incapable of saying the words "Islamists" or "Muslims" in referring to these terrorists. Even the CBC's Rex Murphy -- usually a straight shooter -- got through his 5-minute piece on The National on Thursday without once alluding to the religion which Boko Haram claim inspires them.

But I digress. Most of the girls are still "missing", with the Nigerian authorities professing to have no idea where to look for them. Nigeria's head nagger, Goodluck Jonathan, has appeared on TV begging for technology, weapons and, errr, money to help his army rescue the girls. He said nothing about returning the weapons, jeeps or whatever once the girls are found.

Meanwhile, all right-thinking people agree that, yes, Boko Haram are a bad lot, and shouldn't sell the girls into slavery, prostitution and/or marriage. Hence the hashtag. It has become fashionable, in the last couple of days, to scrawl the hashtag on a piece of cardboard, take a picture of yourself holding it, and post it in the social media, which Walt thinks ought to be called the "anti-social media".

Twittering, tweeting, retweeting... whatever you call taking the "action" just described is, you see, Doing Something. Posting a picture of yourself displaying #BringBackOurGirls shows support for them, you see. One cam imagine them seeing all the tweets on their iPhones, somewhere in the middle of the African bush, and being encouraged.

And who knows? Maybe the thugs who call themselves Boko Haram will see that 1000s of people have the courage to put these pictures online, and be motivated by compassion or fear to do what the hashtag commands. But Walt doubts it. For one thing, these Muslim terrorists -- don't forget it! -- don't look very literate. If they can read Hausa, which is written in Arabic script. Seeing signs in English -- the language of "boko" (= "book", = western/Christian education and culture) probably provokes them to fits of anger and/or laughter.

Tweeting #BringBackOurGirls or anything other expression of your "thoughts" on this or any other subject is a weak and futile gesture. It's like adding a few flowers -- possibly accompanied by a teddy bear -- to one of those "memorials" that spring up at the site of an accident or a crime.

You may think you're Doing Something when you tweet or twitter or throw more garbage on the heap, but really you're guilty of "slacktivism" -- making a small, meaningless gesture to show that you "care" and ease your guilty conscience. Why you or Michelle Obama should feel guilty about something which you had nothing to do with, and which has nothing to do with you, is another matter. But if you really want to help, find a better way.

"Like what?", I hear you ask. That's a toughie, but perhaps a donation to an organization like Amnesty International, or a reputable NGO working to educate girls in the third world, would do some good. Meanwhile, please spare us the vapid and ultimately useless tweets.

Further reading on WWW: "The kidnapping of the Nigerian schoolgirls and the Mirror Image Fallacy"