Category Archives: American Election 2016

What Is Our President Up To?

Posted on by

Does anyone know?

Tucker Carlson has some ideas:

But even he never mentions the elephant in the room: THE BORDER WALL.

My vote for Trump began as an ABC – Anybody But Clinton. But he sold me on the wall. Lord knows the socialist Dems had long abandoned our sovereignty; does anyone recall back when they were for a wall?

So I figured forceful action would remedy that, but it turned out all we got was lots of words – logorrhea at times – but no action in our beleaguered southwest.

Oh, President Trump! Tais toi and start building. That was your strength in real life: building stuff in the most over-regulated city in the world. We believed you.

Maybe Tucker Carlson is right. Maybe the White House is not the place you want to spend your seventies. I’d suggest stepping aside for some other GOP candidate, but they’re little better than the Dims…

An Astute Response to “Immigration is a Right”

Posted on by

From September, speaking at the U.N.:

Promoted by the MSM without any commentary. How refreshing.

The (current) leading comment says:

He protects his own country. Migrants from underdeveloped countries cause only problems. They are not apt to live and work in a highly developed country like the US. They should first start to do something in their own countries. Many migrants come from countries with rich natural sources. Just have a look at Venezuela. It has one of the biggest reserves of oil. There is no reason why Venezuelans have to migrate.

Put your own country in order.

The Puzzle of American Elections: the Midterms

Posted on by

Dr. Turley explains the phenomenon known as “the American mid-term elections”. They have their own rhythm and rationale:

Our Congressional District, Five, is the biggest in Virginia and takes in a lot of blue bubbles – e.g., Charlottesville. So I was sure the (in)famous Leslie Cockburn (Alexander Cockburn’s sister-in-law) would sweep through those urban enclaves. I was so wrong, so delightfully wrong.

I wish Denver Riggleman III the best and hope his ideas prevail. The House will shift to blue, but at least our District is still red. Just think, we have Nancy Pelosi back with the gavel again. Her looney-tunes pronouncements, her private, government-funded flights home to California and her heavily-fenced estate will continue. But the botox may be over. One can hope.

Meanwhile, in the Swamp, the boats are taking on water. Whatcha wanna bet all those along for the ride are looking for golden paddles?

Anchor Babies’ Scam and the 14th Amendment

Posted on by

This video by Dr. Turley is quite succinct about the issues surrounding the latest Trump kerfluffle. Make no mistake: while Trump’s announcements may look random, they’re not. Unlike his tweets, his public announcements are part of his larger design to put a halt to the depredations he sees being inflicted on the U.S.

This time, we have President Trump’s announcement about his decision to sign an Executive Order doing away with the concept of anchor babies as a way to get a toehold in the U.S. If you listen carefully you can hear leftist heads exploding from coast to coast.

Dr. Turley provides a brief explanation of the origin of the 14th Amendment and its later abuse by “open borders” advocates. He enlarges the picture to include Europe, pointing to Denmark as leading the charge for welfare “chauvinism” – i.e., that benefits belong first of all to citizens, not to immigrants. [To Danes: please walk across the bridge and tell that to Sweden.]

This latest announcement by President Trump simply follows up on his promise during the primaries to end the whole anchor baby scam. He and Jeb Bush went toe-to-toe in this conflict of ideologies. This new announcement – that he’ll sign an Executive Order ending it – now comes during the last week of the mid-terms. The timing is on purpose.

No wonder there is growing interest about Trump among the black populace. They have been the big losers in the immigration scuffles. Perhaps the Dems thought they had “the black vote” sewed up, thus making it safe for them to promote the new victims…Trump is about to change that, has already changed it. Whether the change makes a difference in the outcomes of the mid-term elections remains to be seen.

How Many Genders are Fluid?

Posted on by

Dr. Turley discusses where Trump is headed with queer theory. [Hint: to the trashcan where they keep busted ideologies]

This isn’t the first roll-back on the fluidity wave theory of genders; that happened in May. Back then, the website Buzzfeed ran with a scary headline, “The Trump Administration Just Rolled Back Rules That Protect Transgender Prisoners”. Here’s part of it:

[…]

The Bureau of Prisons now “will use biological sex” to make initial determinations in the type of housing transgender inmates are assigned, according to a notice posted Friday evening that modifies the previous policy.

[…]

The shift comes after four evangelical Christian women in a Texas prison sued in US District Court to challenge the Obama-era guidelines, and claimed sharing quarters with transgender women subjected them to dangerous conditions.

Their complaint alleged housing transgender women — whom it calls “men” — along with the general female population ”creates a situation that incessantly violates the privacy of female inmates; endangers the physical and mental health of the female Plaintiffs and others, including prison staff; [and] increases the potential for rape.”

[…]

Wel, duh. Only those who believe they’ll never go to prison would feel Obama’s policy was a good idea. The lemming Left can only ‘feel’, their ability to reason has long since atrophied.

The New York Times opinion piece (or was it labeled ‘news’ again?) only speaks about a “leaked memo”. It provides no text in the bumpf and no link to the original. That’s because they have an inside source who would be fired from the Permanent Bureaucracy for doing something illegal, and leaking memos to the press is illegal.

My opinion? To continue the metaphor, lock the two sexes into legal concrete and let the deeply frivolous go play with themselves. Especially the pitiable beta male who “married” another guy, the latter claiming his ‘gender’ is canine and has a whole schtick to go along with his delusion. Fido needs a psychiatrist – or a dad who tells him to grow up. So does his “husband”.

Having and Not Having

Posted on by

Under heaven all can see beauty as beauty only because there is ugliness.
All can know good as good only because there is evil. *

This is a meditation on the vagaries of time as instanced on this, the 14th anniversary of Gates of Vienna. It is also a contemplation of the tensions that surround any notion of goodness, beauty or truth. At least these are my beginning intentions, but bear in mind that essays are ornery critters. They are often heedless of their author’s aims, developing their own signification.

We’ll see what transpires, eh?

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *

What began as an intellectual distraction from the deep grief due to my daughter’s sudden death has changed gradually into a pilgrimage of sorts; we’re marching to the end, wherever that is. Picking up fellow-travelers along the way, we’ll journey on until Fate intervenes. Some may stay for the entire trip while others drop out as their interests shift. Not everyone can abide the effluvial current that underlies our reality. I certainly can’t.

The often sad and tragic stories we’ve collected over the last fourteen years may be a reflection of a downward spiral of Western civilization as we understand it. How could it be otherwise with the twined efforts of Islam and its fellow-travelling radical socialists? That the former will devour the latter while the mindless sing “Kumbaya” is one possible fate to be contemplated. The coda to that song is probably “Imagine” as sung by China’s National Choir.

But wait! What is that we hear whispering in the wings, waiting to appear? Could it be the muffled voices of a new conservative-populist alliance rising in tentative unison throughout the post-globalist post-empire? They comprise a new chorus rightfully beginning to take themselves seriously as they enter stage right.

Much like the Christian Reformation (credited to Luther, but not possible without the simultaneous populist religious uprisings across Europe), should widespread changes occur, there will be counterattacks, but eventually… if history is any example…

There are severe limits built into the present socialist ethos, where no greater sin than “racism” is possible, nor any greater virtue than “tolerance”. No doubt there will be similar transgressions in the post-secular age. Pray they do not become mirror images of the old sins. Otherwise we will move from chaotic socialism to rigid authoritarianism in our restless search for ontological certainty.

Here’s the thing: Our knowledge of reality has outpaced our ability to digest and comprehend that reality. The human mind flees from ambiguity, is often unwilling or unable to stand in the face of doubt, even if that stance leads eventually to understanding and wisdom. Thus did science and religion draw swords against one another. Yet working together they could inform a far greater comprehension than presently exists.

Will we have the courage to say “who knows?” and wait to see what happens? It takes great patience to wait to see what floats up from the abyss.

The psychiatrist Eric Berne came of age in a time when all American men served in the military. During his stint, Berne created a questionnaire for soldiers he encountered, and from that survey of a cross-section of young American men he created two perceptual categories, two temperaments. He called them Farmers and Mechanics.**

Farmers are those who know they cannot control the greater forces of weather events or pestilence that ultimately affect their crops. While they weed and cultivate, they wait to see what happens. Mechanics are fixers. Things can always be improved or invented out of whole cloth. Though Berne never said so, Farmers are dependent on Mechanics for the inventions that have made their livelihood far easier. But then, Mechanics need to eat, so there you go — another necessary interdependence.

To judge by the comment threads, most of our readers are Mechanics, methinks, though there is an admixture of folk who are content to observe what is, without demanding that anything be “fixed”. Sometimes there simply is no fixing for lies, evil or ugliness. Not in this world; but in the next, who knows?

Continue reading →

Understanding Trump Voters: A Good Start

Posted on by

This long book review, only slightly shortened, is the most recent essay on the Witherspoon Institute’s website.

Pundits will be slicing and dicing the Trump Phenomenon ages hence. In the meantime, the authors of the book in question (and the reviewer, too) have captured well the American zeitgeist.

Sadly, in the almost-two-years since Trump took office, it is still impossible to know whether the wishes of the electorate will be honored by their representatives in Washington D.C.; so far there appear to be few, very few, men of good will there. Or women, either, for that matter. It resembles nothing so much as it does a Fellini film.

The bright spots on the political landscape are the Trump rallies that continue as the hallmark of his direct approach to average American people, people whom American MSM would barricade behind their wall of innuendo and fabrications. Trump’s clever work-around will be taken by future presidents to get past these jornolists.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *

The Great Revolt: Understanding Real Trump Voters

by Carson Holloway

The country’s ruling elites misunderstood or ignored the concerns of a significant segment of the electorate. The Great Revolt suggests that those elites should move beyond lamenting the misfortune (to them) of Trump’s elevation to the presidency and ponder the mistakes on their part that made it possible.

Almost two years after the event, many Americans — even the most sophisticated political observers — are still astonished and perplexed by the results of the 2016 presidential election. “What happened?” many people wonder —including Hillary Clinton herself, who chose those words for the title of her election memoir. How did Donald Trump, the most unlikely presidential candidate in American history, ace Clinton and her party out of the presidency?

Was it a mere fluke? This, of course, is the explanation favored by many Democrats and even some Trump-averse Republicans. Trump, after all, lost the national popular vote, and his electoral triumph depended on eking out narrow popular vote victories in certain key states. No one can dismiss the possibility that, had one or two details played out differently — say, for example, had former FBI Director James Comey remained silent about his brief re-opening of the Clinton e-mail investigation — Clinton would have prevailed.

Or perhaps Trump’s victory was not a fluke, but rather a sign of a significant electoral realignment. This interpretation is favored by Trump’s most ardent supporters, and, no doubt, by the president himself. Trump may have lost the popular vote, but he won the electoral college vote handily — more handily than any Republican since 1988. Moreover, Trump “flipped” a number of states that had been reliably Democratic for decades. While he only won them narrowly, he far outperformed previous GOP nominees in those states.

It is only fair to acknowledge that Hillary Clinton was not alone in having her presidential aspirations thwarted by external factors; Trump faced a national press corps that seemed determined to destroy his candidacy from its inception. One can only wonder how much stronger his campaign might have been had the media chosen to act as a nonpartisan conduit of information instead of as an unpaid arm of the Clinton campaign.

Confronted with these competing plausible interpretations, how are we to understand the significance of the 2016 presidential election? Salena Zito and Brad Todd try to answer this important question in their excellent and fascinating study of Trump voters, The Great Revolt: Inside the Populist Coalition Reshaping American Politics. As the subtitle suggests, the authors are inclined to believe that the 2016 election was no fluke but portends a reconfiguration of the forces that have traditionally shaped American politics. Nevertheless, they are properly cautious about whether Trump’s coalition can be held together and, if so, whether it can remain a governing majority for long.

Who Voted for Trump?

Zito, a journalist, and Todd, a Republican political consultant, make their task more manageable by choosing not to examine Trump supporters nationwide but instead to focus on a relatively narrow subset of them. They surveyed and did extensive interviews with Trump voters from ten counties in five states of America’s Great Lakes region: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, and Iowa.

This approach serves the authors well. These states — and these voters — are where the difference was made and where there is something new to be learned. Most of Trump’s voters, after all, are a relatively well-known and well-understood breed: loyal, long-term Republicans in traditionally Republican states. In these Great Lakes states, however, we also find long-time non-voters and even Democrats (including, remarkably, Democratic Party and labor union activists) who were moved by Trump’s populist appeal either to vote for the first time or to walk away from the party around which they had organized their whole political lives.

The Great Revolt identifies and profiles seven kinds of voters essential to Trump’s winning coalition in these decisive states:

Continue reading →

John Bolton’s Policy Speech on the Eve of 9/11

Posted on by

John Bolton is a forceful conservative. Some discount him as a neocon, but that dismissive sobriquet fails to do justice to his principles.

He grew up in Baltimore, the son of a fireman, so Bolton learned early what an aggressive defense is and how to employ it effectively. He is the quintessential tough guy you want on your side. In other words, he is one answer to Barack Obama’s dithering lack of a genuine and robust foreign policy.

Bolton’s principled sense of justice included taking Clarence Thomas under his wing during their friendship at Yale Law School and then, later, offering advice and comfort during the ugly mess that constituted Thomas’ eventual confirmation to the Supreme Court. As Thomas said, what he endured in the bullying during his hearings was a “high tech lynching”.

Bolton’s speech came on the eve of 9/11, and that is not coincidental. America is standing up to globalists and trans-nationalist criminals like the ICC, founded in the year after 9/11. Such thugs are long overdue to be disbanded. Many of us agree with Bolton: the ICC and the UN need to go away, joining the other extra-national groups in a vast political graveyard, interred there along with The League of Nations.

Here is a list of John Bolton’s Ten Rules of Statecraft. They belong to a world neither Obama nor Clinton understands, and these rules are peculiarly American in their sentiments and form:

1.   “My philosophy is not a bean-counting, accounting ‘look at this.’ It is a philosophy that smaller government is better government, and government that is closer to the people is best of all.”
2.   “Our biggest national security crisis is Barack Obama.”
3.   “People say you favor assassination, what do you think war is? Except that it’s assassination on a much larger scale—a much more horrific scale.”
4.   “Diplomacy is not an end in itself if it does not advance U.S. interests.”
5.   “Negotiation is not a policy. It’s a technique. It’s something you use when it’s to your advantage, and something that you don’t use when it’s not to your advantage.”
6.   “My priority is to give the United States the kind of influence it should have.”
7.   “Everybody pursues their national interests. The only one who gets blamed for it is the United States.”
8.   “You could take several stories off the buildings of most U.S. government agencies and we’d all probably be better for it too.”
9.   “As somebody who writes op-eds and appears on the television, I appreciate as well as anybody that… there is a limit to what that accomplishes.”
    And the pièce de résistance:
10.   “There is no United Nations.”
 

If you would understand John Bolton’s worldview, read this brief book. You’ll grasp the sense of solidarity that is the fundament of conservatives and others on the Right. You may even understand President Trump and those who voted for him.

Meanwhile, this major policy speech is an elucidation of Trump’s ruling philosophy. To understand what Trump’s about, listen to Ambassador Bolton.

Trump’s Visit to the UK: Paul Weston’s Commentary

Posted on by

Paul’s video went up several days ago, so it’s a bit out-of-date for “breaking” news. I so utterly sympathize with his being late to the party. I’m always late; it takes time to consider events, “breaking” or not.

I tried to have this begin just prior to the point where some Brit TV reader “interviews” Sebastian Gorka [you can push it back to the beginning if you like; some good moments there]. As Paul noticed, Gorka was laughing at this fellow…it was almost a ROTFLMAO moment. That is wasn’t moreso is due to Gorka’s self-control since this little beaver isn’t required to listen or think, but his utter lack of self-awareness here is at least of clinical significance. Fascinating for the rest of us. He just rolls on like The-Little-Engine-That-Could. Whadda moron.

I feel sorry for anyone in the UK who has a TV.

RE: Mr. Gorka. He served in the British military as a part-time volunteer, in Intelligence. He also worked for the Hungarian government – and previously, for Viktor Orban, during his time in Hungary. Gorka’s family comes from Hungary, so of course he’s a nationalist. NO, that doesn’t make him an anti-Semite, any more than it does us.

The put-downs and smears of Gorka by the Vast Leftwing Loudmouths are just the price people pay for being part of Trump’s attempts to drain The Swamp.

Elections Have Consequences

Posted on by

How quickly things can change.

America itself is now about to flip, in no small part due to Donald Trump’s presidency.

It’s Dr. Turley (again), this time with background and commentary on the breaking news of the resignation of a Supreme Court Justice:

Trump has already gotten one conservative on the Supremes’ team:
Neil Gorsuch. Adding another will change future generations of law in America. This is huge, guys.

Here is the White House list of possible candidates from the previous so-called “shortlist” used to pick Gorsuch.

And this is the infamous Federalist Society, which will have once more have significant input into President Trump’s second selection. The Senate grilling of whoever is chosen will be brutal. Expect every dirty political trick to be pulled out of the Dems’ hats in an attempt to short-circuit the next conservative nominee. The left is seeing its house of cards collapse; leftists never go quietly into that good night – you’ll be able to hear the shrieking from wherever you are.

Just think: these appointments could have been Hillary’s to make. She must be having another meltdown; by now, ol’ Hillary “Fukushima”* Clinton is probably radioactive. Bless her heart.

Next? Look for The Wall/Fence/Barrier to start growing again on our southwest border as Americans increasingly ask for a limit to immigration. With the Supremes’ recent upholding his list of terrorist countries as a valid immigration restriction, The Donald’s on a roll.

Will he gloat?? Does the sun rise in the east?

*edited for accuracy.

Are You a “Subject” or a “Target”?

Posted on by

The second half of this post has been sitting in my drafts folder since the recent fundraiser began. I was finally moved to post it because of yesterday’s news about the FBI raid on President Trump’s lawyer’s office and home. It’s so bad even his lawyer has had to hire a lawyer to protect himself from the vengeful horde who refuse to accept the American voters’ choice.

How do they do manage these incursions? Simple: blue states’ U.S. attorneys and judges are part and parcel of The Swamp. The former can always find a sympathetic latter to sign off on a search warrant… if it’s in aid of destroying the Republicans.

And how does this particular victim, Trump & Assoc., begin making its way through the python? Simple: here’s a former federal prosecutor spilling the beans:

Special counsel Robert Mueller has reportedly advised Donald Trump’s lawyers that the president is a “subject” but not a “target” of Mueller’s investigation. This has resulted in a great deal of triumphal celebration among the president’s supporters. After all, they reason, if Mueller hasn’t by now dredged up enough evidence to designate Trump a “target,” then the president must be in the clear.

Unfortunately, whether someone is a “target” as opposed to a “subject” of an investigation is a distinction without a difference. It’s all a matter of timing, and the “subject” of an investigation can become a “target” in the blink of a prosecutor’s eye. It happens every day…

The manual provides that, before they testify in the grand jury, “targets” and “subjects” are to be given the exact same warnings against self-incrimination, save that a “target” should also be given “a supplemental warning that the witness’s conduct is being investigated for possible violation of federal criminal law.” These designations apply with equal force to interrogations outside the grand jury.

So, what effect do these carefully worded official policy distinctions between “targets” and “subjects” have on actual federal investigations in and out of the grand jury? Absolutely none. Here’s what really happens.

A prosecutor will always want to lure a “target” into giving a statement either to investigators or in the grand jury to pin down his version of events. This foreknowledge will help the prosecutor structure the government’s case to be presented at trial and counter any potential defense.

Moreover, if other evidence can contradict the target’s version, it can be presented at trial as a false exculpatory declaration by the defendant. This would be proof supporting the substantive crimes alleged, on the legal theory that an innocent person wouldn’t try to lie his way out of the charges and that the lies prove consciousness of guilt.

Also, depending on whether the statement was made in an interrogation or under oath before a grand jury, the “target” can be charged either with lying to investigators or with perjury or false swearing.

So, how does the prosecutor get the “target” to voluntarily submit to interrogation or testify before the grand jury? He tells defense counsel that the “target” is merely a “subject” of the investigation. Believe it or not, this frequently causes defense counsel and their clients to think they may have a chance of talking their way out of trouble.

But frequently, after the so-called “subject” has given his version of events, the prosecutor changes the witness’s designation from a mere “subject” to a “target.” This usually takes place about a nanosecond before the “target” is indicted.

Mueller’s reported designation of the president as a mere “subject” of the investigation is not only meaningless, it is a reprise of one of the oldest prosecutorial tricks in the book. He is setting a trap in the hope that the president and his legal team will think he is almost in the clear and, accordingly, should voluntarily submit to interrogation in order to clear up any misconceptions

This move is all the more alarming given that it appears to have been prompted by reports that the president’s lawyers are actually considering whether their client should voluntarily submit to an interrogation by Team Mueller.

So, based on my 20 years of conducting federal and state grand jury and street-level investigations and another 25 representing “subjects” and “targets,” permit me to offer this advice to the president’s legal team. Don’t be encouraged or misled by Mueller’s designation of your client as a mere “subject.” He’s simply baiting the trap and crossing his fingers that you and your client will be dumb enough to grab for the cheese.

Also, be aware that you are not involved in some kind of gentlemanly legal contest with reasonable, high-minded adversaries. These people are thugs with law degrees. If they can get a crack at your client in an interrogation, it won’t end well for him…

So wake up and quit playing footsie with Mueller and his feral band of Hillary Clinton sycophants. While you’re at it, you may also want to buy some brass knuckles.

Yes on the brass knuckles for the remaining Trumpsters in Washington. All the Obama shenanigans were always swept under the rug, particularly his racist, envious fecklessness. When the history of this period comes to be written, Obama will go down as our most divisive, destructive “Commander in Chief”.

Is all this really legal? I guess it depends on what the meaning of “is” is. Last week, Byron York explained how the Trump-Russia investigation fails to align with the rule of law and why we should care about what they’re doing. He also gives us the name for their major weapon (aside from weaponized bureaucracies).

Continue reading →

Bodacious Trump: A Germanic Perspective

Posted on by

Many thanks to JLH for translating this op-ed from the influential Swiss daily Neue Zürcher Zeitung:

Bodacious Trump

by Konrad Paul Liessmann
January 23, 2018

The outstanding benefits of Trump doubtless include a new unity in the world. He has become a medium of perception.

A year after Donald Trump became president of the USA, it is time to summarize — not just about his political successes and failures, but also about what Trump, often unintentionally, has contributed to the emotional conditions and intellectual discourse of our time. The outstanding benefits of Trump include a new unity in the world. It is really all against one. Commentary on him has been unanimously negative. The arc of negative reaction to him stretches from Right to Left. Differentiated reports or judgments are scarce. It is the common understanding that he is a catastrophe for the USA and the world, cognitively and morally insufficient. An intellectually limited racist and sexist is the most powerful man in the world.

This knowledge shared by almost everyone not only fosters a strong “we” feeling, but also a profoundly satisfying feeling of superiority. With the picture of Trump the media paints and the revelations from the inner life of the white House we encounter daily, anyone can feel infinitely superior to the American president — more sensitive, more educated, more intelligent, more respectable, more competent and more moral. And not to be forgotten — in dealing with Trump, we become excellent psychologists, who are capable of remotely diagnosing personality disorders, narcissism, infantilism and megalomania.

This feeling of superiority, however, prevents us from recognizing that Trump is equipped to give us a critical view of our revered modern world. Even people who have considered truth to be relative, reality to be a construction and science to be a phallogocentric[1] maneuver by white men, are discovering — thanks to Trump — their love of objective facts. Even people for whom directness and authenticity have been sacred are recognizing, thanks to Trump, what these ideals actually mean, and — after a little self control — begin to yearn for simulated empathy and diplomatic pretense. Even people who saw in the new media the epitome of progress, must admit that the world can be neither understood nor governed by means of Twitter or television. After years of internet euphoria, thanks to Trump, determining that someone does not read books has again become a reproach.

Conversely, Trump makes it possible for many assumptions and convictions lurking in our unconscious, courtesy of prevailing moral and political standards, to be brought into the light of day. The mistrust intellectuals have for the people and for democracy can now be openly articulated. After Trump’s election victory, some are wondering whether the leftist focus on the needs of capricious minorities was not overdone, and are turning back to the needs of the working class.

Continue reading →

Warning: You May Be Guilty of BadThink!

Posted on by

We received the following email from Twitter last night. Posting it here may make it more likely that Twitter will suspend our account, but that don’t confront me none — the auto-tweet from our blog quit working last year for some reason, I don’t have time to tweet manually, and Dymphna has lost interest in Twitter since it bottomed out with “shadow-banning” and all that other stuff.

And now this. What’s next in the Twitterverse?

Dear Gates of Vienna,

As part of our recent work to understand Russian-linked activities on Twitter during the 2016 U.S. presidential election, we identified and suspended a number of accounts that were potentially connected to a propaganda effort by a Russian government-linked organization known as the Internet Research Agency.

Consistent with our commitment to transparency, we are emailing you because we have reason to believe that you:

  • Were following one or more of these accounts at the time the accounts were suspended;
  • Replied to or mentioned one or more of these accounts during the election period; or
  • Retweeted, quote tweeted, or liked content from one or more of these accounts during the election period.

This is purely for your own information purposes, and is not related to a security concern for your account. We are sharing this information so that you can learn more about these accounts and the nature of the Russian propaganda effort. You can see examples of content from these suspended accounts on our blog if you’re interested.

People look to Twitter for useful, timely, and appropriate information. We are taking active steps to stop malicious accounts and Tweets from spreading, and we are determined to keep ahead of the tactics of bad actors. For example, in recent months we have developed new techniques to identify accounts manipulating our platform, have improved our process for challenging suspicious accounts, and have introduced new measures designed to identify and take action on coordinated malicious activity. In 2018, we are building on these improvements. Our blog also contains more information about these efforts.

People come to Twitter to see what’s happening in the world. We are committed to making it the best place to do that and to being transparent with the people who use and trust our platform.

Twitter

The Ballad of the Blue-Collar Billionaire

Posted on by

For a change of pace, our German translator JLH channels Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in this little ditty about the Bumpkin From the Big Apple.

The Ballad of the Blue-Collar Billionaire

by JLH

                                        I

Come listen my children and you shall hear
A political tale that will bring you good cheer.
On November the eighth in the year ’16,
A man was elected that none had foreseen
Or thought or guessed, let alone, expected
Would be nominated, much less, elected.

He stepped on the stage at that very first meeting,
Expected by all to take a great beating.
The Fourth Estate was in tears of joy:
Here was the perfect whipping boy.
His mouth was so big, his tweets even bigger,
And always good for a snort or a snigger.
Whatever he said — be it false, be it true,
There just was no limit to what they could do.
They prepared to record the brief but wild flare,
Of the man who would be the Blue-Collar Billionaire.

As the Redcoats had massed at Lexington,
So “neutral” moderators first sought to stun,
With fusillades of factoids and lethal spin,
But it all bounced off a fight-toughened skin.
Questions intended to demonize him,
To tear him asunder and limb from limb,
Were seen by the watching multitude
As proof of humanity, if not rectitude.

When interrogators wanted a loyalty oath,
He said that’s alright, but only if both
The party and others said to his face
That they would support him, if he won the race.
There were some opponents who looked down their noses
And made cutting remarks while striking great poses;
Claimed knowledge, experience and comprehension
To smooth over quarrels and lessen dissension.
All versus a man from the building domain,
Whose language was blunt, if not outright profane.

Then there began the chipping away:
His crazy ideas would make taxpayers pay
For impossible schemes that no one could do —
Politically impractical, as everyone (else) knew.
His demeanor was bumptious; his language askew;
How could he know what statesmen should do?
The elegant thinking of political types
Was beyond a man who lived only by hype.

But there also began a most startling display
Of competing in a counterintuitive way.
He played the bully as well as the fool;
He called them all names like a kid after school.
And then he did something that was really unfair —
So embarrassing it was, it was so hard to bear.
He did something that almost seemed underhand:
He proclaimed his unabashed love for this land!
He also had a cap that was red with white letters,
Which he proudly flourished in front of his betters.

Not patriotism, too! For the love of God!
Does he not know that makes him look odd?
And what was that, that he just threw out?
He’s pledging support to those credulous louts,
Evangelical Christians — he’s got their back.
When we already have them! The ignorant hack!

And another religious wave he would make —
He read out the story of Al Miller’s “The Snake.”

Continue reading →