Man Charged With a Felony for Posting Satirical Voting Memes Sets a Chilling Precedent ⋆ Politicrossing
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Man Charged With a Felony for Posting Satirical Voting Memes Sets a Chilling Precedent

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Late last month, a Florida man was arrested and charged with a felony for posting memes pretending to instruct people to vote by text or social media. It is impossible to vote those ways, so the memes were obviously a joke. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of memes floating around joking about voting. Douglass Mackey, who also goes by Ricky Vaughn, posted several of these memes during the 2016 election year. One of the memes showed a black woman next to an African-Americans for Hillary sign. It said, “Avoid the line. Vote from home. Text ‘Hillary’ to 59925. Vote for Hillary and be a part of history.” A small notation at the bottom of the meme said it was paid for by Hillary for President 2016. 

 

No one would believe the meme was accurate, send a text message, and think they had voted. In fact, the Clinton campaign sent back a default response to anyone who texted the number saying the ad was not approved by the campaign. It was clearly someone’s goofy sense of humor. People joke about the saying, “Democrats vote on Tuesday, Republicans vote on Wednesday.” No one is prosecuted for it.  

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Legal scholar Eugene Volokh observes that Mackey is not being prosecuted under a statute that clearly prohibits lying about how to vote. Some states have them. Instead, Mackey is being prosecuted under 18 U.S.C. § 241, a federal law that punishes conspiracies “to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person … in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution.” Volokh says no one has been prosecuted under that law for speech influencing someone from voting. People lie in political campaigns all the time and aren’t prosecuted, so why go after free speech in politics now? Those prosecuted for election fraud generally engage in some type of activity such as voter fraud, not merely speech.

 

Twitter said at first that the memes did not violate their rules. Considering how quick the company is to censor memes and kick conservatives off the platform, it is telling that it did not initially find anything wrong.  

 

The fact the DOJ did not arrest MacKey until just after the Inauguration, even though he posted the memes over four years earlier when they first received publicity, is evidence the prosecution is politically motivated by the Biden administration. MacKey is an easy target. He posted antisemitic and racist memes. No one wants to defend someone like that. The right understandably wants to distance themselves from someone that offensive. But this is how the left makes inroads into silencing the right; they target a disreputable extremist who they associate with the right because they’re so easy to take down. Once a precedent is set with the first target, it becomes easier to go after others on the right, others who aren’t so offensive. 

 

It is part of a larger effort to ban conservative satire, because humor has proven to be effective. The right excels here, since the left’s positions aren’t conducive to humor. The left has made a lot of ground in recent years by pretending the right is offensive. Once they went down that path, it didn’t leave a lot of room left for the left to joke, or they’d risk violating their own draconian policies.  

 

And one of the main ways the left goes after conservative memes is by claiming they are fake news — even humorous memes that are clearly satire. Their “fact checking” sites now also fact check opinion, not just facts. So not only has the left been able to get these memes removed from social media, but gets those posting them banned.  

 

It was bad enough deleting obvious satire. It was worse banning people from social media who posted the memes. Now it’s gotten to an extremely disturbing level, prosecuting people who post the memes. This is a slippery slope and if allowed to continue, will set a dangerous precedent for conservatives merely posting satire about elections, a type of political speech our Founding Fathers revered, which is why they protected it in the First Amendment to our Constitution.

 

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Rachel Alexander is a conservative political writer and pundit. She is the editor of Intellectual Conservative and a recovering attorney. She was ranked by Right Wing News as one of the 50 Best Conservative Columnists from 2011-2019.



 
 
 

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News

Did Wokeness Kill SVB?

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Why did Silicon Valley Bank fail?

The answer is simple.  They cared more about ‘equity’ and ‘inclusion’ in the investment decisions they made that they did about liquidity an interest rates.  They cared more about the people involved in the deals they backed checking all the identity politics boxes that they did about them being actually competent and able to grow and sustain a business.

Businesses exist to solve problems in the marketplace. They don’t exist to push wacky left-wing social engineering theories.  The honchos at SVB cared more about diversifying the identity of their borrowers and investees than they do about diversifying their portfolio.

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This is the EVIL of ESG and what it does to people’s wealth and finances. Companies like Blackrock who are pushing this nonsense are the enemies of capitalism and freedom. Caring more about so called Environmental, Social, and Governance ratings than shareholder value and financial performance is negligence and malpractice rolled into one.

We can no longer remain on the sidelines as the woke trash our companies and bully them into complying with their crazy and demented vision of society.  We need to push back agains the woke, and find the companies that are not woke and reward them with massive spending and loyalty for angering to traditional patriotic American values.

We need a parallel economy of patriots and patriotic to support, and to defund the EVIL LEFT and the companies that lack the courage to stand up to them. Complaining about these woke companies isn’t enough. We all must show leadership and support conservative and patriotic companies that provide viable alternatives to the woke liberal companies destroying our country and values. Cancel culture can cut both ways. We can DEFUND the weak, feckless, cowardly companies that are embracing woke-ism, and at the same time, FUND the companies that are embracing patriotism and American exceptionalism.

Wayne Allyn Root and I have spent over 3 years researching and putting together list of the most patriotic companies in America, and we have put it out in a brilliant new book, “The Great Patriot BUY-cott Book.” 

It’s a list of 123 patriotic companies and media firms to support, buy from, and divert your dollars toward, so that you’re not spending money with companies that hate you  and your values anymore.

Conservatives have a real opportunity to vote with our wallets! Let’s make every dollar count and get right to it!

We have put together a Designation, the “Free CorpTM”, which has six categories for determining where a company stands on values that matter to its patriotic customer base. We call this the “Freedom Scale.”

These are:

  1. Political Involvement — Do they stick to business, or are they virtue signalling and supporting leftist causes? Scoring is on a 1 to 5 Scale, 1 being they are virtue signalling and cravenly caving to the woke mob, and 5 is that they refuse to be bullied and tell the woke mob to go to hell.
  2. Political donations — To which political candidates and causes do they donate? Do they donate to woke, liberal and Marxist organizations and candidates — such as BLM, Media Matters, the ACLU, the Democrat Party, and Planned Parenthood — or to patriotic and conservative ones — the GOP, RNC, MAGA, NRA, National Right to Life, Project Veritas, etc.? Scoring is on a 1 to 5 Scale, 1 is they give exclusively to woke causes and 5 is they give exclusively to patriot ones.
  3. Workplace culture — Is their workplace culture one that embraces freedom or is it poisoned by political correctness? Do they promote freedom and free expression at work, or are some opinions more equal than others? Do they pressure their employees to toe the woke line: pro-child grooming, pro-denying biology, pro-socialism and Marxism, pro-shutting down free speech…versus pro-family, pro-God, pro-biology, pro-free speech, pro-capitalism?
  4. Marketing messaging — Are the marketing messages of the company steeped in pro-USA and American exceptionalism rhetoric, or are they heinously woke and anti-human and pro-scarcity? Do they celebrate America and freedom, or do they denigrate her and crap all over liberty?
  5. Hiring policies for employees and vendors — Does the company hire the best man or woman for the job, or do they engage in woke racism and favor anyone but conservatives and straight, white males? Do they treat all employees and vendors as equals, or do they explicitly engage in harsh bigotry against conservatives and straight, white males?
  6. Commitment to freedom in society — Does the company stand for American values, or has it been frightened into toeing the woke line? Do its political donations go to freedom-loving causes and organizations, as well as MAGA and non-establishment Republicans, or does it donate to woke, intolerant, and radical organizations (like BLM and Antifa), and Democrats and RINOS (Republicans-in-name-only)?

This “Freedom Scale” will be used to help patriotic consumers determine whether a company deserves their patronage.

Now to the book, “The Great Patriot BUY-cott Book!” We are proud of what we believe in. The media derisively calls us “far-right.” We know exactly what that means — “so far, we’ve always been right!”

By the way, there is nothing “far-right” about our views. On every issue we believe in, polls show we are in the “Silent Majority.” Most Americans are either “center-right” or so-called “far-right.”

This book will start with chapters outlining what we believe in and what we believe patriots across America believe in. If you agree, if this sounds like you, then take action and buy from companies with similar beliefs and values, run by people who support our conservative and patriotic candidates and causes.

After those opening chapters that define what we stand for, then the list begins! We list 123 companies and media brands that we have determined are fellow patriots. BUY from them, support them, praise them, and pray for them.

It’s time to stand up for America and the patriotic companies that stand with us.

God bless these companies, God bless patriots like you, and God bless America.

You can go and purchase your company here:

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Education

Eight Dysphemisms to Start Your Week

A dysphemism is a word or phrase that is more offensive than the words it is replacing

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A “euphemism” is the substitution of an agreeable or inoffensive expression for one that might suggest something more bluntly or offend others, according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary. To say, for example, “He doesn’t have all his marbles,” is regarded as gentler than saying “He is stark raving insane.”

The Mighty Dysphemism

The opposite of a euphemism is a “dysphemism.” A dysphemism is a word or phrase that is more offensive, blunt, or harsh than the word or phrase which it is replacing. For example, instead of stating that the Manhattan District Attorney is “cognitively challenged,” you refer to him instead as a “total partisan whack job.”

For your amusement, at the least, here are eight dysphemism followed by the kinder, gentler, or at least more definitive terminology of what is being said:

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“Biting off more than you can chew” – Orally extracting an amount of edible matter that exceeds what one is comfortably able to masticate.

“That’s a load of B.S.” – Your assertion reminds one of bovine excretion.

“Sh__faced” – Bearing an expression that one normally associates with the act of removing solid waste from the body.

“Can’t tell your ass from your elbow” – Unable to differentiate between your dorsal side orifice and the joint connecting your forearm and upper arm.

“Stepping in a pile of crap” – A pedestrian venture into an accumulation of animal or human waste.

“Go F-yourself” – Engage in the act of physical consummation with yourself.

“Up to your eyeballs in crap” – Finding yourself surrounded at the visual level by unpleasantly aromatic organic waste.

“Carnal knowledge” – Having a close encounter with another, free of garments and other impediments, leading to direct tactile stimulation.

A True Time Saver

Thank goodness for dysphemisms. In a most fundamental way, they are true time-savers. Without them, we’d be groping for tedious phrasing all day long. “Up your nose with a rubber hose,” if you don’t “catch my drift.”

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