90 Miles From Tyranny

Friday, December 2, 2022

The 90 Miles Mystery Box: Episode #1920

You have come across a mystery box. But what is inside?

It could be literally anything from the serene to the horrific,

from the beautiful to the repugnant,

from the mysterious to the familiar.

If you decide to open it, you could be disappointed,

you could be inspired, you could be appalled.

This is not for the faint of heart or the easily offended.

You have been warned.

Visage à trois #627

Three Videos For Your Viewing Pleasure:

Three Additional Bonus Videos:

Quick Hits Of Wisdom, Knowledge And Snark #807

Our Lying Idiot Media Really Is That Dumb As stupid as you think the media is, it’s even worse.

Broke-ness follows wokeness because it’s invariably the incompetent, lazy, corrupt and otherwise failed institutions that radicalize to avoid doing their jobs. From the federal government to corporate monopolies to financial gimmicks like FTX to the media to massive charities, institutional wokeness is a red flag that an organization is incompetent or a scam.

As a rule of thumb, the less innovative and functional an organization is, the more likely it is to disguise its innate worthlessness through virtue signaling. Executives go woke when they have no idea how to move a company forward. Employees who don’t want to do their jobs descend into identity politics and demand that the company reflect their values. Those values, apart from all the right racial and sexual politics, will eventually come down to not doing their jobs.

The top generals and admirals in the military have gone woke because they have no idea how to win wars anymore. And there are fewer consequences for declaring a ‘war on hate’ and failing than for losing a war against China or 7th century savages with rocket launchers.

And then there’s the media.

One of the most astounding stories of media malfeasance is how the Associated Press ran a story claiming that Russian missiles struck Poland after a 10 minute Slack chat with a reporter who told colleagues, “I’m actually at a doctor’s appointment.” Nobody at the AP, including its Arab correspondent running the European desk, did any kind of follow-up or got confirmation.

When a scandal like this reveals the internal workings of the media, it’s almost laughable how little fact checking goes into stories and how thoroughly ignorant everyone involved really is.

But the only thing astounding about the story is how commonplace it is. The media now routinely operates this way after discarding the layers of fact checking and runs reports based solely on whether they fit a political narrative and whether there is some anonymous government source behind them. The Russian missile strike story met both criteria.

“They call us to explain to them what’s happening in Moscow and Cairo,” Ben Rhodes, Obama’s close adviser, once sneered. “Most of the outlets are reporting on world events from Washington. The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. That’s a sea change. They literally know nothing.”

He told this to the New York Times.

Sarah Palin’s lawsuit against the New York Times exposed how shoddy the paper’s process that led to it repeating the ‘bullseye’ smear against her was. Former editorial page editor James Bennet sourced the widely discredited claim that her election map had somehow led to the shooting of former Rep. Gabby Giffords by a mentally unstable man from an old column by a former restaurant critic. Despite the plethora of material showing that it wasn’t true, the paper’s research didn’t go to its news articles or those of any others, but a lefty foodie’s rant.

That is just how the media operates. It’s not a brilliant operation of intrepid reporters who happen to think that Communism was a disappointing failure that needs to be...

Tucker Carlson raised the alarm about how big tech giant Apple has joined China in its oppressive internet policies, selling out American principles and customers as they do so.

One might assume Apple, the most valuable company in the world, is an American company, but you wouldn’t be able to tell by its fealty to the authoritarian Chinese regime.

Carlson is warning that “Apple is covering for the government of China,” Fox News reported.

“Financial listings describe Apple as an American company. You can see why they do. Apple is headquartered in the United States. It was founded by Americans. To this day, it’s run by an American citizen, but those facts don’t tell the story. In fact, at this point, Apple is in no sense American. Apple’s loyalty is to the government of China,” Carlson recently said on “Tucker Carlson Tonight.”

But Apple is not acting like a company born in liberty-loving America.

“Earlier this month, Apple did the bidding of the Chinese government to crush domestic protests against the Communist Party there,” Carlson gravely reported. “Apple did this by disabling its permanent AirDrop feature in China and so far, only in China. It’s the only country in which it’s disabled. Why did Apple disable that feature in China? Well, because that feature, permanent AirDrop, allows iPhone users to communicate directly with one another without using the internet or cellular networks — both of which in a totalitarian state like China, are controlled by the government and that means that without permanent AirDrop, it’s effectively impossible for freedom-minded citizens to organize with one another. They’re powerless.”

Apple knew that iPhone users in China were using Apple AirDrop feature to get around the government’s despotic controls. So the company fell all over itself to do the Chinese government’s bidding.

“Apple is now an active collaborator with China’s murderous police state. When tanks roll into a Chinese city, Apple is rooting for the tanks,” Carlson said, adding, “this is not an overstatement.”

Apple has officially become “a partner with a Chinese police state,” Carlson warned.

“Apple’s decision to actively help America’s enemies, to hurt ordinary people seeking freedom, just wasn’t news in the view of The New York Times — not that you should be surprised by it. Apple has been sucking up to the Communist Party of...

Visage à trois #626

Three Videos For Your Viewing Pleasure:

Three Additional Bonus Videos:

Quick Hits Of Wisdom, Knowledge And Snark #805

DeSantis Calls Out Apple For Threatening to ‘Nuke’ Twitter From its App Store; Says it Merits a Response From Congress

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis on Tuesday urged Congress to look into Apple Inc.’s alleged threat to remove Twitter from its App store, calling it a “raw exercise of monopolistic power.”

“Chief Twit” Elon Musk first revealed that Apple had made the threat on Twitter, Monday, noting that the company had not given any reason for the hostile move.

As soon as Musk took over the platform in late October and began enacting free speech policies, a slew of companies, including Apple, cancelled their advertisements in protest. The billionaire has taken the woke exodus in stride, but appeared to be concerned about Apple’s threat on Monday, because the removal of Twitter from iPhone’s app store would cripple the platform, as it did when Big tech took the same punitive actions against Parler.

In response to Big tech’s hostility toward free speech, Musk has expressed a willingness to do whatever it takes to save the platform.

Conservative podcaster Liz Wheeler noted in a tweet last week that if Apple and Google removed Twitter from their app stores, Musk could respond by producing his own smartphone. “Half the country would happily ditch the biased, snooping iPhone & Android,” Wheeler wrote. “The man builds rockets to Mars, a silly little smartphone should be easy, right?”

In response, Musk said he might be forced to do just that. “I certainly hope it does not come to that, but, yes, if there is no other choice, I will make an alternative phone,” he tweeted back.

DeSantis on Tuesday characterized Apple’s alleged threat to ruin Twitter as an attack on free speech, during a press conference on Florida’s infrastructure improvements at Cecil Airport in Jacksonville.

“Apple is threatening to remove Twitter from the App store because Elon Musk is actually opening it up for free speech and is restoring a lot of accounts that were unfairly and illegitimately suspended for putting out accurate information about COVID,” he said.

Last week, Musk posted a poll asking Twitter users if he should grant amnesty to all of the accounts that had been suspended by Twitter. Respondents overwhelmingly voted to restore the accounts, and Musk said in a subsequent tweet that the amnesties would begin this week.

Musk also revealed that Twitter enforced its rules almost exclusively against conservatives, displaying bias that was blatant and undeniable.

“The more I learn, the worse it gets,” he tweeted following the poll. “The world should know the truth of what has been happening at Twitter. Transparency will earn the trust of the people.”

In a subsequent Tweet, he wrote: “It is objectively the case that “conservative” political candidates were more negatively affected than “progressive” candidates. Anyone using Twitter knows this. Question is simply one of...