I’ve been commenting in various forums about censorship and propaganda for many years. Usually meeting indifference, apathy and — concerning some of the more Orwellian goings on — incredulity. I wonder how this report will be greeted.
Stumble Joe wants to censor private text messages, according to Politico (link in source) and use cell phones to push government approved information to users. Covid-19 is the excuse. Social engineering (psychological operations) is the method.
Such a plan, if implemented, would be clearly unconstitutional. Our government is not allowed to use third parties to violate constitutional protections. Surely texting is protected speech; it isn’t even public.
If government can intervene in private text conversations it can intervene in voice conversations. How would you like it if fact checkers interrupted your voice calls to correct things you say or hear? That’s what this amounts to.
I agree with RedState: This plan is evil.
Tidewater News and Opinion Forum 
It shows desperation, both in losing the battle over science, and in losing control of the population.
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I hope you’re right. It could also be an action item in the next phase of a successful psyop.
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“Biden allied groups, including the Democratic National Committee, are also planning to engage fact-checkers more aggressively and work with SMS carriers to dispel misinformation about vaccines that is sent over social media and text messages.”
From the folks who gave us “alternative facts” we are now hearing that fact checking is bad.
‘You know why I do it? I do it to discredit you all and demean you all so when you write negative stories about me, no one will believe you.’ D. Trump as told to L. Stahl
We don’t need fact checkers, just obey #45. If he says the government will force you to get vaccinated, it must be true.
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RE: “From the folks who gave us ‘alternative facts’ we are now hearing that fact checking is bad.”
In this case it is.
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Why?
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Do you want “fact checkers” inviting themselves into your private conversations to change the things you say or hear?
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There are no “private” conversations on the internet. Whatever you post becomes a permanent record for all to see and comment on. No reason to fear a fact check.
Unless the truth is not what you want to see or hear.
IMHO
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RE: “There are no ‘private’ conversations on the internet.”
Under this plan there won’t be any “real” conversations, either, not even on cell phones.
Are you saying you want to be censored?
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I think that to a large extent the disappointing vaccination rate is just blind tribalism. I suspect that had Trump been reelected, it would be Democrats refusing the OWS vaccines and Republicans elbowing the way to the front of the line.
Of course, the FDA and CDC didn’t help with panicked announcements of adverse effects without providing the context of how often those same things were happening in unvaccinated people. Consider the blood clots some women had. Imagine if from the first it had been stressed that those clots were less common in vaccinated women who were non-smokers than in unvaccinated women who smoked, or used oral contraceptives.
The people who run the FDA and CDC must be among the stupidest educated people alive.
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I agree on the tribalism.
I know you disagree, but when a simple matter of mask wearing or not defined the party, we were in trouble. And that was a year ago.
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The OWS vaccines? I think you mean the British and German vaccines, but I digress. I think your suspicion is wrong. Democrats are not inclined to martyr themselves to make a political statement. It would require not a tribal but a cult mentality to do that. Your people have that cult mentality. We don’t.
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“I think you mean the British and German vaccines…”
Not me, I got the Cuban one.
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Thanks for that. I had no idea that Cuba had independently developed an apparently safe and effective vaccine. How much OWS money did they get to make that happen, I wonder.
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Two shots of Rum?
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In all seriousness, they created their own effective vaccine and have long had lower infant and maternal mortality rates than the US despite generations of crippling US sanctions and the loss of Soviet support in the 90s.
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RE: “In all seriousness, they created their own effective vaccine…”
The only evidence that Cuba’s Covid vaccine is either safe or effective comes from government press releases. In Venezuela where it is being administered, health officials have complained about the lack of data. The WHO has declined to approve the drug for the same reason.
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” I suspect that had Trump been reelected, it would be Democrats refusing the OWS vaccines and Republicans elbowing the way to the front of the line.”
I disagree. Democrats are smart enough to protect themselves with vaccines (notice I said Democrats and not the anti-vax left). I do agree that more Republicans would have realized the vaccines were effective.
And if 45 had come out and said things like that from the start, the 70% target would have been met and possibly exceeded BIGLY. But G-d forbid Biden should get a win. All in the name of political BS.
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https://www.msn.com/en-us/entertainment/news/kamala-harris-says-she-wouldnt-trust-a-vaccine-trump-recommended/ar-BB19O9k4
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October news item. Quite timely. And if the VP feels that way, that is her opinion. Which I fully disagree with.
You see, Democrats aren’t blind, Kool-Aid drinking sheep like Republicans are.
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October was the point. When it was Trumps vaccine it was untested and dangerous, and not just Harris, Pelosi and Schummer too. But once the election was behind them then full speed ahead.
It shouldn’t be political.
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“It shouldn’t be political.”
Agree 100%. Too bad it was made political BY the previous administration. And continues to be so by the party of the previous administration.
See recaps of CPAC for proof of my statement.
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” When it was Trumps vaccine it was untested and dangerous”…
Well that is a true statement. But once it was tested and passed scientific muster for an EUA, it should have been all hands on deck (or all sleeves rolled up), except for those with medical conditions that would preclude them from getting the vaccine.
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Uh, at that time VP Harris said that she would follow the science but would not trust the word of Donald Trump. Pretty good stance, actually.
So really, this report does not bolster your belief in any way. Democrats follow the science. Republicans follow Dear Leader. The result of the election would not have moved that much in either way. IMHO.
Trump’s total failure to even try to move his people to get vaccinated goes to show how little he cares for them. Pawns to be sacrificed to block a Biden goal.
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Politicians say silly things just before elections. This was about a month before the 2020 one.
She did reiterate that if the administration through Dr. Fauci said it was a good vaccine, she would most enthusiastically get the jab.
Was that a smart statement? Heck no. Just polarizing and needlessly petty.
Trump gets away with such insults, but getting down to his level is not smart politics in my opinion. Or as even Republicans sometimes admit, you can’t “out-Trump” the ex.
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RE: “The people who run the FDA and CDC must be among the stupidest educated people alive.”
Their stupidity looks like group think forged under emergency conditions to me. To some extent that’s understandable.
Big Tech and media have been the bigger culprit by actively suppressing many topics of discussion. For example, few people today are aware that mRNA vaccines for coronaviruses existed prior to the pandemic, but they were never approved for public use for various technical reasons.
An actual free press could have compensated for some of the FDA/CDC failings.
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For a decent look at the history of mRNA, which goes back 40 years, it is rather interesting. Nothing nefarious, just scientists trying to lasso the viral horses that pop up every so often.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/03/how-mrna-technology-could-change-world/618431/
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RE: “Nothing nefarious, just scientists trying to lasso the viral horses that pop up every so often.”
No doubt. Had you known that mRNA vaccines were considered unsafe prior to the pandemic, would you have taken one?
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Were there any actual mRNA vaccines on the market?
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RE: “Were there any actual mRNA vaccines on the market?”
Of course not. They were never approved based on safety considerations. Had you known that, would you have taken one?
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It depends. If Trump praised it, no. If Biden praised it, yes.😇
This is what you wanted to hear.
The reality is that the choice was not available in the first place. Second, I would need more detail as to why it was considered unsafe.
By the time I got my shots, millions had been vaccinated for months, 10’s of thousands months before that.
I know several people, relatives too, that have contracted COVID. Not just my age, but also in their 40’s and 50’s.
The general consensus is that it was not a mild cold despite the protestations of surrogate administration mouthpieces on talk radio and FOX. It was a rough road and some, a year or more later, still can’t taste or smell too well and actually are unable to stomach some foods they used to like.
Meanwhile we are seeing some new surges in places like Missouri with low vaccination rates. That means plenty of more incubators for variants.
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RE: “This is what you wanted to hear.”
I wanted an honest answer, which you have not given. When you elected to take the vaccine, you knew nothing about the history of mRNA vaccines, did you? By your own admission there was a 40-year history to consult, but at the time you were vaccinated, you had no knowledge of any of that, did you?
Your ignorance is not your fault. Your media sources could have informed you. But they didn’t.
The Atlantic article you link to could have been written in 2019, before Covid even had a name. But it is only now that it is written.
The question I ask is a simple one: If you had known about the published safety concerns related to mRNA vaccines for coronavirus, would you have taken one?
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mRNA was in the news as a possible solution early on the pandemic. OWS purchase guarantees here and abroad pushed production and testing for an attainable goal.
There were published safety concerns and debates most of last year. We all saw them, or at least those curious enough to bother. What happened decades, or even just a few years earlier that caused concerns was addressed, mostly solved and we had a viable, safe vaccine.
Every complication was reported in the news and a bit of effort revealed the scarcity of bad outcomes versus getting sick.
Then I got the jabs.
So I knew the risks.
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The old wisdom is that you can lead a horse to water but you cannot make him drink seems to apply here. For whatever reason many people are simply refusing to save themselves and, like Mr. Roberts, desperately searching for something that justifies their decision.
The penalty for their choice is the risk and reality of a premature death. There were 18,000 Covid deaths in this country in May. 99.2 % of them were the deaths of unvaccinated people.
https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-health-941fcf43d9731c76c16e7354f5d5e187
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The article linked to starts with this sentence . . .
“The Biden administration has failed spectacularly at their goal of getting 70% of the American population vaccinated for COVID by the beginning of July.”
That is an obvious lie so why read any further? The actual level of adult vaccinations is 67%. Hardly a spectacular failure and of course that miss was caused by Trump Republicans in Red states believing that it would be disloyal to Dear Leader to help Biden reach his goal. Nice play “conservatives” – cause a failure, exaggerate it and point fingers at the people applying the best available science to save YOUR lives.
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When Biden made that goal, the vaccination rate was such that the goal couldn’t be missed. Suddenly the black population and especially 18 to 26 year olds said no thanks. Hardly a “conservative” problem unless those groups suddenly “woke” up. No, Biden failed when he couldn’t lose. I never considered 1 shot as vaccinated anyway.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/white-house-concedes-us-hit-bidens-70-vaccination/story?id=78419718
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Google “Room 641A” and tell us what you learn.
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Great, more fodder for the conspiracy folks.
We have enough skeletons in our national closet, so this is not unexpected. This kind of stuff has gone on since WW2 when we decided that the Red Menace required parking our Constitution in storage for a while.
And, my theory is that the military-industrial complex is complicit in all the combat from that point on. Our bombing in Yemen by proxy, hitting hospitals and schools by design, is only the latest outrage.
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Right but we shouldn’t pay any attention to that stuff. Only the outrages we can shoehorn into the culture war du jour.
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I agree. There are serious war crimes that have been committed in the name of peace and tranquility.
We have made arch enemies of two nations, Iran and Cuba, for no reason other than our rabid approach to the Cold War. Now if we had worked out a reasonable relationship rather than trying to upend two major nations I would wager that we’d have better allies.
Instead we opted to install dictators in Central America which we are now suffering a humanitarian problem on the border. And we opted to support the most repressive terrorist regime, Saudi Arabia, and its Wahhabi fanatics. Overturning a duly elected leader in Iran in favor of the Shah.
Job security for Lockheed, et.al., for decades.
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And now we’re (officially) leaving Afghanistan because “Radical Islamic Terror” is no longer needed since there is a new Red Menace in China. They can just dust off the old Soviet talking points.
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I think we are leaving Afghanistan because finally we have a policy based on obvious truth – there is no way to “win.” Trump seemed to know that too, but still left the troops their for four years. To be fair and balanced, President Obama should have declared victory and ended our role there on his watch as well.
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As I recall, our first foray into Afghanistan was with special forces and a billion in bribe money to get the warlords to do the fighting and rid the Taliban and their terrorist connections. Which was not a bad idea for what it was.
However, the Taliban came into power because of the murderous warlords after the Soviets left and to be honest, many Afghans preferred the Taliban.
We just need to make a statement with a swift reprisal and it should have ended with Tora Bora and our leaving.
But…and the rest is history still churning up bodies and money.
Bottom line? Once you occupy a country, you sort of own it. Just like Bush the Elder warned in the first Gulf War.
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Also to be fair and honest, 45 did order the withdrawal. He was just hoping to still be in office at the time.
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RE: “Great, more fodder for the conspiracy folks.”
The “conspiracy folks” have known about Room 641A and its equivalents for a long time, but they get dismissed as kooks when they try to share the information.
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Just because our government has some history that is less than savory does not mean everything is some kind of conspiracy to enslave Americans.
Just like all nations, particularly the more powerful ones, we do good things, bad things and a lot in between. And a lot of stuff happens because of stupidity.
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RE: “Just because our government has some history…”
In this case the question is whether it is acceptable for government to censor private conversations. I say No, because I don’t like the idea and believe it to be unconstitutional. You seem to be saying Yes, but I can’t fathom why.
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