Iirc, he gave an interview where he bizarrely and repeatedly mentioned the fact that he likes to paint wine boxes like buses...over and over. And it was thought (and, most likely, leaked) that he was doing this so that when people Googled "Boris bus" it would come up with this story, and not the story about the infamous "Brexit bus" (it also leaked that it was Lynton Crosby, a well-known political campaign manager, that suggested this...which does support the claim that it isn't total bs).
Leaving that aside this is yet another clear example of the power big tech wields over society and how they will abuse it due to their internal biases. We need renewed antitrust legislation (+ enforcement) to break up these companies, regulation to treat social media/Internet infrastructure as common carriers/public utilities, and the inclusion of political identity as a protected class under anti-discrimination laws.
We also shouldn’t exempt private organizations from upholding core American values like free speech. The largest platforms are as powerful as the government, and given they are under threat of legislative action on various issues and the current administration admitted to being in contact with tech companies regarding “problematic” content, it is also clear that an abusive party or administration can essentially outsource government-driven censorship to overly powerful private entities.
1) I think it's safe to assume that Joe Biden has no SEO expertise, which means that someone with the power to send the President of the United States out for a photo op does. They went out and found someone named Brandon for Biden to pose for a photo op with.
2) To me it's terrifying that Presidential actions are now being dictated by SEO concerns, but it is interesting.
3) I would have expected this kind of thing from Trump, since he was obsessed with his public image. But apparently Biden, or at least someone close to him, is similarly obsessed.
4) Reading between the lines, the fact they responded in this way makes it appear that the administration is becoming concerned with the the growing anti-Biden sentiment that has arisen in the wake of the Afghanistan debacle and issues with cognitive decline that are becoming increasingly harder to hide. That town hall was a disaster [1].
[1] https://www.newsweek.com/joe-biden-town-hall-strange-moments...
Joe Biden doesn’t run the country. DC Establishment does. It always has. The very same thing they accuse others of such as causing big tech monopolies, wealth inequality, climate change etc, the same establishment protects those interests all.
He was the most backed candidate by the Wall St. for a reason. Enough said.
News straight up lied to control the 2020 election narrative and outcome. We have watched an unprecedented fast fall into authoritarianism. Major networks are all but complete propaganda departments. Biden criticism was swept under the rug to protect him all the while the media held no punches for his opposition. Rational nuanced discussion of pandemic and related policies were off the table and we were just dictated mandates. People didn't vote for this. Our country has stumbled from one self inflicted crisis to the next as the coverage of the failures goes either unreported or censored. Kneejerk mistruths drive doomed to fail federal policy ( border control horse whips!)
This administration is so unbelievably incompetent.
People are rightly angry as hell. This discontent isn't limited to specific groups. It includes: Blacks, whites, lefts, rights, zoomer, boomer. It's not a small group either.
"Let's go Brandon" is being shouted across the country.
We should listen. We should ask why.
We were told successes were failures.
Now where told failures were successes.
People don't like being lied to or ignored.
"Let's go Brandon!"
Does this really surprise you?
- The opposing parties leadership is censored more than every authoritarian around the world.
- stories about Biden’s son is censored
- bad stories about Biden are censored
- every person connected to the opposing party is being “investigated”
- the DOJ literally sent out a statement saying they were going to investigate parents going to school boards as “domestic terrorists” (at worst, these are local crimes, if at all)
- anyone who has claimed election interference on the 2020 election has been threatened with lawsuits, lost jobs, etc
- a majority of the opposition media figures are censored
- no one could attend the inauguration even
What does this all have in common? They want the opposition to have no voice and theirs to be the only one you see. They try to intimidate and censor such that they have the only voice. “Let’s go Brandon” was too hard to censor, so they’re now doing this. Remove, rewrite, repeat
The reason I say that is now opposition content is removed, they can put out their content.
> - anyone who has claimed election interference on the 2020 election has been threatened with lawsuits, lost jobs, etc
I feel this is an especially interesting claim because the only people i've seen get hit with law suits for this have continually defamed specific companies and not just someone shouting in the street that it was fraudulent.
And did any of those stories relate to Joe Biden?
I don't see how that could have been "suppressed" if it only came out very recently.
I’m skeptical of the argument that recent vindication of a suppressed story somehow justifies its original suppression.
https://news.yahoo.com/hot-water-emails-uncovered-show-10061...
The senate report has interesting stuff
https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/HSGAC_Finance_Rep...
There’s also that time biden got the prosecutor investigating burisma fired (by withholding funds).
https://www.wsj.com/video/opinion-joe-biden-forced-ukraine-t...
Seems an awful like what Trump was impeached for...
Do it twice. It's okay, we'll wait.
Further, an associate of the Biden family confirmed all the emails were real and he told the family not to take Chinese money.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/who-is-tony-bobulinski-hunt...
Stories about Trumps children trend for weeks if there's anything negative... they don't get suppressed, questioned or challenged.
Hunter is accused of being a Crack Addict, a pedophile, selling influence, etc... each enough to sit in the media for weeks and it's all swept under the rug.
Trump supposedly says shithole and it's a national emergency... Biden supposedly gets a cut from his son's business dealings in China/Russia/etc and it's nothing.
How does Hunter relate to Joe? are you fucking serious?
The WSJ investigated that story at the time and said that there wasn't sufficient evidence. If you have issues, you should blame the WSJ. https://www.wsj.com/articles/hunter-bidens-ex-business-partn...
Note the following quote "corporate records reviewed by The Wall Street Journal show no role for Joe Biden"
If the right leaning WSJ isn't willing to support a story like this, why do you think it's true?
likewise, the laptop story was stopped because "its russian disinformation" even though 1) it never was and 2) those reasons never stop bad stories about Trump and family.
The main point of my post is that rumors sit in the new for months on Trump & crew... but "Journalists" suddenly care about "evidence" when it comes to Biden and Democrats?
"Media" is suppressing bad "rumors" about Biden and running rumors about Trump without issue. THAT is the issue and if you don't see the hypocrisy then you're part of the problem.
And right leaning?
Center: https://www.allsides.com/news-source/wall-street-journal-med...
It was a Windows-based LG machine. I can totally see how a 70 year old grifter wouldn't want to spend the money on the correct prop for the media.
Somehow, I'm supposed to simultaneously believe that a guy with sensitive material on laptops worth literal millions is just going to drop off multiple machines and never pick them up.... and that a Mac repair guy isn't smart enough to identify what is and what is not a Macbook.
Maybe the reason nobody believes Trump or his henchmen is because they lie so much. Stranger things have happened. As it is, all evidence about this entire ordeal points towards Trump's team trying to Benghazi Biden. Biden wanted a corrupt prosecutor out of power for the same reason that virtually every other leader of the western world did: dude was corrupt.
You don't like Rudy? Okay... now... why are you silent about Hunter? Joe? other stories about their corruption?
Why do you accept at face value rumors about the right - when many of those rumors turn out to be false or their "lies" turn out to be true? and then you'll support "biden wants" despite the fact that he's every bit the corrupt grifter you claim to despise in Rudy?
"all the evidence" This is about rumors and support/suppression of those rumors.
Again... rumors about Trump spend weeks in the news without facts - or against facts... journalists care about "all evidence" with Biden when that evidence has been proven lies time and time again.
If you support the hypocrisy, then you're a hypocrite. You'll push rumors against Trump and hide rumors against Biden because you don't care about truth.
It's much worse than that.
Virtually all news stories in 2020/early 2021 about Trump have been retracted by cnn.com since then.
Almost all sound bytes from the White House and Squad today are the opposite of what they said pre-election, especially about corona - they said they would refuse a vaccine developed under the Trump administration, and that vaccine mandates were not going to happen.
The most striking is that "Trump's Muslim travel ban list" was originally drawn up by the previous Obama administration. (The list was created because there's several countries that have disorganized passport control, so ICE can't verify any of those documents when required, which means they don't know who is trying to enter the US, when that mattered. With Open Borders, those people can now just walk across the Mexico border.)
I'd say that's related!
My hot take: Probably because every politician likely does it. They wouldn’t want to set any ball rolling that could hurt them in the future.
HN is not the place for this. Save this for reddit or facebook.
And yes, equal concern for any president. Trump largely cared mostly about stuffing his pockets full of money.
* Afghanistan pull out: Disaster. Many Americans STILL trapped in Afghanistan while Biden looks like cornholio on national TV
* 100+ days of crisis at the border. No law and order. No enforcement of law. Massive crisis that didn't exist on Jan 5th.
* Massive inflation under way. Unseen failure from the top
* Supply chain collapsing by corruption, shit laws and mandates
* Fauci has been undeniably shown the liar we all knew he was before. Corrupt POS with funding lies and experimentation on animals.
* FBI ignores violence across America and instead goes after "domestic terrorists"... aka parents who don't blindly obey the gestapo tactics.
And I didn't say America was destroyed... I said Biden was in the process of destroying - and the above scandals as a starting point... they show an inept or corrupt plan that is in effect destroying America as we speak.
Lets Go Brandon.
First and foremost, there's a reason why political discussion is not welcomed here, as it gets ugly really fast.
You made a simple point and I wanted to clarify it:
> biden gets a cut from his family making millions on his name
I'm not aware how Biden Sr. is cashing in on his son's "work". Please note that I'm not contesting the fact that his son's role was some degree of corruption, but I haven't seen compelling evidence that the money was flowing back to his dad.
Please stay on topic.
Hard to stay on topic with you moving the goal posts...
Can we get an itinerary so I know where the goal posts are going to be? That way we can try to synchronize what "on topic is" since it apparently changes from one post to the next with you...
Disclaimer, I voted for Biden but am willing to call out his failures at any time.
The reason why I'm ok with "censoring" the Hunter stories at that time is that it was purely whataboutism and a distraction. Just like with the buttery males, it was never about the professed concerns, it was about making them look bad.
If this issue (and others like it) could be discussed in a non partisan way I'd be all for it, but it's not. This hand wringing is insincere at best and should be ignored.
I've yet to see anything that indicates these concerned citizens care about principles rather than tribal politics. Happy to be proven wrong, but not holding my breath.
Even if there was truth to it (I do think a genteel corruption was in play but not to this extent), these arguments are being made in bad faith. There's no concern for actual corruption as they don't seem to care when it happens in any other context -- it's just "gotcha" politics.
US foreign policy in its very nature is corrupt (it's the lobbying arm of big business). Let's shine a light on it but that light needs to be colorblind to red and blue.
Without recognition of the corruption of the previous administration this dialog is simply partisan pandering. I'd be more than happy to share my criticisms for the administration and its party (including this aforementioned corruption) but if your concern does not cross party lines then it's no concern of mine.
And you will always find news articles telling you not to believe your lying eyes. Sadly most Americans have grown a default assumption that the media is lying to you, which at least in this case is true. Reading the first hand emails gives a very different impression.
"The scope of work should also include organization of a visit of widely recognized and influential current and/or former US policy-makers to Ukraine in November aiming to conduct meetings with and bring positive signal/message and support on Nikolay’s issue to the Ukrainian top officials above with the ultimate purpose to close down for any cases/pursuits against Nikolay [Burisma founder] in Ukraine."
https://thenewamerican.com/assets/sites/2/251024_1.jpg
It's very difficult to read that email and not come to the conclusion that Hunter was being paid to ask his dad to shut down the investigation into Burisma. Especially since later emails indicate that Joe Biden ultimately did meet with Burisma execs.
>but if your concern does not cross party lines then it's no concern of mine.
Make no mistakes I would love to see any elected official that engages in corruption -- Republican or Democrat -- dragged to prison.
While there are a large number of who are just using this to play political gotcha, it is going too far to accuse anyone concerned about this scandal.
I am among those that see another Trump presidency as an existential threat and am willing to look the other way if it helps prevent that.
As long as the political climate remains as it is I don't feel I have any other choice.
The fact checking suggests an entirely different interpretation - https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/10/21/fact...
Not least that everyone wanted Shokin out. And this is before you get to Shokin investigating Burisma re: the years 2010-12; i.e. before Hunter Biden even joined the company. Also Shokin's Burisma probe was in 2014; the international pressure to oust Shokin was in 2016.
It all just falls apart under the barest fact check. C'mon.
What gets conveniently overlooked by those pushing this story is the fact that the only interest was in the story itself, as an attack angle. To hell with that.
This is effectively a disingenuous argument when the evidence clearly suggests that so called "reliable sources" are colluding to suppress content that is inconvenient for their political leanings.
Incidentally it also ensures that all of wikipedia leans left, since any outlets which run counter to leftist politics are rejected as unreliable by definition. It's a dishonest, preemptive dismissal of any alternative perspective and it is absolutely toxic to national discourse. In practice you are relying on a circular argument, wherein the self proclaimed arbiters of truth have also defined themselves, and only themselves, as "reliable sources".
"Glenn Greenwald Says CIA Duped Media About Hunter Biden Story " https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/glenn-greenwald-says...
But you are making ridiculous absurd statements. No, not everyone in the other part is getting investigated. No, not anyone who claimed interference is getting threatened. How would that be possible if up until the last week (and going well into the future), we're discussing this stuff?
This absurd hyperbole ruins whatever valid points you have because you look like the kind of commenter that HN was supposedly above, but for some reason dang decided to bump this explicitly political bs (with the expected political comments) to the front page. We didn't even try to get a better source than fox news?
If you care about this stuff (and you should), you need to disconnect it from political stuff. You're jumping in bed with people that lie.
Not the OC, but this is quite the claim considering you're doing exactly the same thing
Oddly, it’s pretty well hidden in search, while other, older town halls came right up. I had to select a number of specific options in YouTube’s search just to find it.
This is all they’re concerned about. Both the left and the right. They hire groups of people specifically to manage their public image. This is why MSM didn’t want negative coverage of Biden during the race.
Would be interested to know other examples of prominent politicians doing this. I'm pretty sure I recall a British politician doing this a year or two ago. I can't remember exactly who it was or what it was about, but I recall it seemed very obvious what was going on - moreso than this Biden/Brandon instance.
> This whole thing got started earlier this month, at the Talladega Superspeedway. Brandon Brown had just won a NASCAR race. And sportscaster Kelli Stavast at one point commented during an interview with Brown afterward how the crowd seemed to be chanting in his honor: ‘Let’s go, Brandon!”
>Unfortunately, that’s not actually what they were chanting. Not even close. The crowd was very clearly addressing President Biden, not Brandon. Only, with an f-bomb in front of his name instead of “Let’s go!”
Video: https://youtu.be/kQ8asiDn2_A
Source: https://bgr.com/politics/lets-go-brandon-the-backstory-of-th...
"Dogwhistling" doesn't mean "saying something that means something else", it means using coded or indirect language to communicate something to a specific group of people while hoping that the general audience doesn't pick up on your meaning. Everybody knows what "let's go Brandon" is code for, and the people who say it aren't trying to hide what they really mean.
> The first difficulty results from the premise that deliberate lies can never have value. Exaggeration -- even clear falsification -- may arguably serve useful social purposes linked to the values underlying freedom of expression. A person fighting cruelty against animals may knowingly cite false statistics in pursuit of his or her beliefs and with the purpose of communicating a more fundamental message, e.g., `cruelty to animals is increasing and must be stopped'. A doctor, in order to persuade people to be inoculated against a burgeoning epidemic, may exaggerate the number or geographical location of persons potentially infected with the virus. An artist, for artistic purposes, may make a statement that a particular society considers both an assertion of fact and a manifestly deliberate lie; consider the case of Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses, viewed by many Muslim societies as perpetrating deliberate lies against the Prophet.
Your not being oppressed. Get over it.
Because free speech is a societal and cultural value, as much as a legal one. A commune of religious weirdos with no laws at all could be highly tolerant or intolerant of dissent. It could embrace or reject free speech, just socially based on whether they ostracize the dissenters. Similarly, a nation of publishers where every publisher refuses to publish anything controversial, dissident or offensive may have no First Amendment issues, but it's not one that takes the principles and values of free speech very seriously.
It seems like you are confusing real life with some fantasy world you live in. Welcome to late stage capitalism. It's not fair.
It is sad I have to repeat myself so you can understand that private companies can do as they please.
And what’s so bad about medical misinformation vs say talking about murdering people? This is a rabbit hole and the left is gleefully throwing us down it.
Predominantly that I'm not aware of a huge number of people who listened to Stan and then committed a murder suicide, but I'm aware of a staggering number of people who watched some absolute moron's YouTube video about COVID-19 and then decided to ingest horse dewormer.
I'm not sure how much of this difference is because music is performative (a song about murders is not typically trying to convince its listeners to commit murders), or how much of it is just because the demographic watching conspiratorial YouTube videos are way more gullible than people listening to Eminem songs, but it's pretty clear that medical disinformation is causing a huge amount of harm, and it's not at all clear that this is the case for songs with aggressive lyrics.
No, if you're simply liberal or conservative in the USA. They generally think that speech should be uncensored until it's directly causing legitimate violence (e.g., yelling "fire" in a crowded theater or threatening death).
YouTube is a private company. Them censoring someone is not an infringement on free speech.
It's evident that there's been political gain on the matter, which is a "manufactured" social phenomenon, but it's obvious that there's a physically propagating coronavirus that mutates and spreads via airborne transmission.
Unfortunately, I've seen people vacillate back-and-forth on the two depending on what they're trying to assert.
I'm very aware this was the same argument used to normalize white supremacist hand signals.
(And yes, I'm aware of the Brandon meme.)
"Let's go Brandon" was #1 on itunes for days. Another version was #3. Another version was #17. All at the same time! Huge swaths of people from from highly diverse backgrounds are unifing against what they see as poor leadership.
They are totally trying to sow FUD into the narrative form political purpose.
You know the artist in question, Bryson Gray, is a black man?
PS. You murdered my usage of the word swath. Congratulations?
https://twitter.com/potus/status/1451544259992203266
The goal of this is to reclaim “let’s go Brandon” and it’s obvious.
EDIT: for those who don’t know what “Let’s go Brandon” means, a child comment linked to a 40 second video: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kQ8asiDn2_A&feature=youtu.be
For those who don’t watch or attend sport events — this happens at many of the events lately.