A Shinto shrine is believed to house the spirits of the dead honoured there. Yasukuni is 'host' to a number of spirits who got that way because they were executed for war crimes and crimes against humanity by the Allies, or indeed fell in the field while involved in brutal military occupations. It's a point of serious discord in East Asia that the Japanese would be seen to honour people responsible for such escapades as the Rape of Nanking. The Chinese commonly use it on the international stage, as there's still a lot of ill feeling in the West about Japanese atrocities.

Still, it's remarkably tin eared of that stupid old fool to suggest the Japanese PM not visit the shrine. It's very far from the equivalent of laying a wreath on Hitler's grave, and it betrays a complete misunderstanding of the culture there. It suggests something between baizuo-style meddling western leftism and actual sympathy for the Chinese position.

Above somebody is suggesting it was deemed a fake account. The account may or may not be fake, and I'm sure that the "algorithm" is carefully crafted to target thoughtcrime.

That's the utility of the terms like "disinformation" they keep using- "fact checkers" are targeted on to an instance of thoughtcrime by the report system (nominally independent, but as the left have found it effective, I'm willing to bet 95% of political reports come from leftists).

At that point, "fact checking" begins. In this case, I'm guessing that he was challenged to ID himself- provide his dox to a company that is hand in hand with his opponents' campaign. If he gets verified, then it's open season on his job as every foul blue hair cockroach calls his employer. If not, then as he'd be a fool to put his real name above something that offends terrorists, hey presto, it's misinformation.

i remember Twitter holding itself out as the "voice of the oppressed" during various foreign revolutions/civil wars. Imagine if they demanded real names then, or aggressively fact checked every scrap of samizdat leaking through the drumbeat of controlled media.

Wonder if they would apply this level of scrutiny to party-approved tweets...

I dread to ask about the walnut sauce reference, but there's definitely a case to be made that the face isn't from neck compression but because he's got something shoved up his bottom.

Better than the popular vote, though. A president leads the federation of the states, and that includes Wyoming, whose entire population is less than the number of al fresco defecators in San Franfreakshow, or who could be outnumbered by the vote from a Chicago cemetery. If anything, I'd like to see some scheme to tilt the EC even further from the cities, perhaps raise that minimum number of votes from 3 to 5- 21 votes, strippable from some of those big numbers.

Also, look at the Southwest. It's a grim laugh when you think of how we are simultaneously told that the Great Replacement is just a Nazi conspiracy, and that it's a great thing that demographic change will take the federal government out of the hands of the hated founding stock forever.

He's got a Mr. Mackay thing going on with his collar, I swear. Compressed neck, swollen head with bugging out eyes. It's like he's trying to build up immunity to hanging for some reason.

Peace, peace is coming and our elites, cultural, military, media and political, hate it.

There's a cosmic irony in that these people, often born of the 60s peace movement, the free love era, the campus radicals, gave us above all an international settlement that meant the US especially and the West generally would be the world's policeman and refuge in perpetuity. Invade the world, invite the world.

Their vaunted "diplomacy", with the game playing and the nice words and reset buttons, strengthened enemies abroad and at home. The world was tilting towards chaos precisely because of their conduct, and how could you even think of electing that rude bully Trump? We'd have a nuclear war in five minutes because he's mean. Everybody sensible knows that we should politely enforce a no-fly zone over Syria- we'll shoot down Russian planes to protect terrorists.

Why on earth are they permitted to have pens?

Got a mirror? Twitter is cancer and seems to be throttling requests again.

I'm not buying it until it's independently confirmed. This sounds like stuff that's being said to discredit leaks, a straw man that can be dismissed as being "the allegation"- Hunter can most likely safely deny that he raped/tortured/murdered Chinese kids on tape without worrying about being contradicted.

Hey presto, the story goes from "Emails show pay for play" to "Conspiracy theorists claim Hunter Biden raped and tortured children", which won't pan out. When it doesn't, expect the media to retroactively claim that these bug-eyed allegations were "the bombshell" and look at how they never showed a thing.

Access to that material in the context of law enforcement is strictly locked down and limited, too. The material is treated as secret, both to protect the investigation and potential victims. Any "source" is either being incredibly reckless in who they are telling, or has heard the information fifth hand from a game of telephone.

We should make them think it's happening, at least. For the cost of some inconsequential edits to random articles (did you know that Columbo was canonically 55 years old?) you might be able to provoke them into cannibalising contributors.

"Debunked right wing conspiracy theory" is a meme at this point

She got away with it by putting her lesbianism and her love of baby killing front and centre. Had she not mentioned those, the response would have been very different.

Thanks a lot, appreciate it. Got to say the writing seems a bit disjointed in the article, though- the guy has a particular lens through which he assesses behaviour and there's always a peril of making stretches where that's the case.

The meat of the charge is fairly serious, in the sense we've all come to know- elite paedophiles get away with their offences. Beau Biden nodded along to a plea deal that allowed a vile pederast to be out of jail on house arrest, during which time the vile pederast did it again.

I think the liberal elite are particularly affected by what was called "WEIRD" thinking (Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic)- those don't sound too bad, but they speak to a condition where things are overly abstracted, and where taboos (in this case, those around child abuse) are strange atavisms without reason behind them.

As such, you or I would happily say "A pederast compulsively does horrific evil, and the best he could hope from a plea deal would be a life sentence rather than hanging". We recognise that child abuse is a terrible moral evil, always. To the WEIRD, elitist thinker, they will approach from other angles- "how do we minimise harm to all involved?" "Why do we punish that crime so aggressively?" and so on.

These questions (esp. the ever-present "why") are corrosive when used in bad faith, and that's exactly how they get used. Faith in justice is undermined by the judge's acceptance of that deal, and Biden is signalling his membership in the elite class (for whom justice is an abstraction), as opposed to the common hordes (who want paedophiles punished severely). It's this abstraction of justice as a means of solving social problems (real or confected), rather than protecting the innocent and punishing the guilty, that leads to the very credible belief that our elites have a problem with being amoral or worse.

See the "spirit cooking" escapades, the Podesta brothers and their utterly foul artwork, Lena Dunham's parents who covered their walls with their mental-ward paintings of their genitals. Neophilia, amorality, conscious rejection of cultural taboos- and then they are shocked that some people (the Q crowd, their new boogeyman) think they might be a nest of paedophiles.

No access error on the site, hook me up with a copy/paste?

This is an in-kind campaign contribution

I don't know why I even bothered to do the Wikipedia->Early life thing on a sinecured, very wealthy leftist senator, but it is, of course, as you say. Another coincidence.

I'm not claiming he is a communist in the sense of the cold war threat, but that he got the way he was due to indoctrination by people who should have been removed from positions of influence. The Sixties radicals turned tenured academics and journalists should have had their noses thoroughly rubbed in the crimes of communism, before being exiled from public life. I'm fully aware the rioters are Americans, indeed those who radicalised him are also Americans, but it doesn't change the analysis.

This is my takeaway, too- he went there as a "security guard", and he assumed he had a great deal of arbitrary authority. It's fairly clear he escalated that situation at each turn- he demands/reaches for the mace (I'm a security guard, I can do what I like!), gets slapped for his troubles, then draws as his opponent is retreating.

He has been radicalised by the media into thinking that Trump supporters are subhuman Nazis, that cops are just evil racists with guns and that he would be a far better steward of law and order if only he just carried a gun and told people what to do.

Dolloff escalated the situation, making self-defence a very shaky claim. His victim was retreating, and any actions he took in his assumed role of "security guard" would likely weigh against him- for instance, demanding the victim turn over his mace/reaching for it.

Junior Spies- Big Brother needs YOU.

Exciting opportunities available for Junior Fact Checkers(tm)! Successful candidates will have a long track record of making naked appeals to authority and selectively applying context, both as an excuse and as squid ink.

You will need a willingness to take opponents' statements as literally as necessary in order to justify a Fact Check False Rating(tm), and conversely you will need the right kind of eyes that will let you see the figurative truth behind the words of goodthinkers and accord them a coveted Fact Check True Rating(tm).

You will be able to see the bad faith of all who are not fully committed to our cause. See Kian, above. Is he asking questions, or is he purposely sowing doubt? You, the successful Junior Fact Checker, will already know the answer. Why question, when truth is right there on a bluecheck's Twitter feed, in the Washington Post, and on CNN?

Pay scales from 0 to 0.

This is the kind of fascism it takes six years at a four year college to see. Monstrous and yet subtle fascism, characterised by the most rigorous free expression laws on Earth, the private ownership of the means of production and self-defence, and a culture of individualism and self-reliance.

At the end of the Cold War, we should have had de-sovietisation trials just as was done to the German Nazis. Yeltsin would have opened the books on culture war agents/fellow travellers/useful idiots in exchange for a trade deal. Ever take money from Nazi/Soviet interests? Align yourself with their foreign policy goals? Call yourself a Nazi, or a Communist? Well then, no government or academic positions until you're rehabilitated.