In this post, I want to talk about how whether Big Money from Big Tech can influence elections. I also want to look at the role of fact-checkers, who pays for their fact-checking, and what effect their fact-checks have on our elections.

Let’s start with this article about the Virginia election, that’s being held today:

So how do Democrats plan to ensure a McAuliffe win and a subsequent retention of power in the state and U.S. Senate? By using the same tactic they used in the 2020 national contest: profligate mail-in voting and fake grassroots get-out-the-vote efforts funding by philanthropies and wealthy leftists, a strategy revealed through Fakebook CEO Mark 2uckerberg’s gift to the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL).

[…]We were among the first to report in-depth on how billionaire 2uckerberg and the little-known Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL) spent $350 million to effectively privatize the 2020 election in battleground states, helping turnout for Biden in the name of C0VID-19 “relief.”

Overnight, this little nonprofit’s revenues grew by more than 12,000 percent from $2.8 million thanks to 2uckerberg’s cash injection…

Across nine states, our data shows that CTCL’s grants consistently ignored Trump counties in favor of big, Democratic-leaning spots like Philadelphia, Maricopa County, and Houston—all essential to Biden’s victory. In Georgia, for instance, Biden counties were two-and-a-half times more likely to receive CTCL funding than Trump counties.

Virginia received close to $4 million in 2uck Bucks, more than one-third of which went to populous Fairfax County to “support in-person early voting” and “vote by mail.” Fairfax County was Biden’s biggest vote-haul in the state and is the linchpin to McAuliffe’s strategy.

The 2uck Bucks plan isn’t really surprising if you’ve seen how Fakebook uses “fact checkers” to censor news stories.

Previously, I blogged about how Fakebook censored an interview with an abortion survivor right before an election. I also blogged about one of Fakebook’s “fact-checkers”, whose social media posts revealed that she is a partisan Democrat who hates Trump. I also blogged about how Fakebook’s fact-checker “Politifact” had to retract a fact-check of Candace Owens, the well-known black conservative, after she sued them. I also blogged about how Project Veritas filmed Fakebook employees bragging about how they deliberately censor conservative content. I blogged about how Fakebook banned well-known Christian evangelist Franklin Graham for “hate speech”. And I blogged about how Fakebook internal documents revealed that they censor criticism of the Democrat party, “especially before important elections”.

Recently, Fakebook apparently censored content that claimed that ga5 prices went up in part because of Biden’s attacks on energy production.

Here’s another article from The Federalist:

Fakebook appeared to censor a meme on Wednesday that placed blame for high ga5 prices on President Joe Biden, citing a USA Today fact-check to justify the censorship.

“Fact check: Rising ga5 prices due to high demand and low supply, not Biden’s policies,” a pop-up explained, with a link to the supposed fact-check from USA Today.

The fact-check was funded by the same 2uck Bucks we saw earlier that were pumped into Democrat-leaning voting areas:

“Our fact check work is supported in part by a grant from Fakebook,” the paper wrote.

So what actions did the Biden administration take that would have affected the price of ga5 at the pump? The fact-checkers didn’t look at any.

To check the facts, you have to check the article from The Federalist:

The sharp rise in ga5 prices was a direct consequence of Biden’s immediate offensive, stifling capital investment with pressure on Wall Street in a capital-intensive industry, plus repeated pledges for a cascade of taxes and regulation to phase out fossil fuels.

“You don’t have to ban something if you regulate it to death,” former Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler explained to The Federalist in October last year as Biden ran on a platform to do just that.

On his first day in the Oval Office, Biden began to make good on his promises with an executive order implementing a moratorium on leasing in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Sixty miles west of the coastal plain, home to between 4.3 and 11.8 billion barrels of recoverable oil, millions of dollars of equipment stand ready for deployment in Prudhoe Bay to the 1.6 million out of the nearly 20 million-acre refuge once opened for drilling.

[…]Biden continued to suspend new oil and ga5 leases on federal lands pending a review of the federal leasing program from the Interior Department. The review, promised for release by late summer, is still pending.

The suspension on leasing remained in place until a federal judge overturned the ban to set up auctions next spring, but headwinds from a hostile administration hamper incentives for risking millions in new investment.

Biden has successfully suppressed a ramp-up in production through a combination of Wall Street pressure, new regulation, and outright bans where possible on new drilling.

“We would be happy to increase our production, but this administration is doing everything in its power to run us out of business,” Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Denver-based industry trade group Western Energy Alliance, told The Federalist. “I think if they stop manipulation markets the problem would be solved.”

The point is that a Biden win signaled that regulations on energy production were on the way.  Investors didn’t wait for the regulations to take effect. They reduced their investments immediately. Energy producers didn’t wait for the regulations to take effect. They reduced their production, and supply dropped. Anyone with any understanding of economics knows what happens when supply goes down – prices rise.

I found an article in the New York Times by far-left columnist Bret Stephens, where he expresses his disappointment in Joe Biden for failing at foreign policy. What I liked about this article is that he listed out some things that I knew about, (i.e. – Afghanistan retreat), but many more that I did not know about. Take a look at his list, and see how many you knew about.

Remember what former Defense Secretary Robert Gates said about Joe Biden?

I think he has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.

Robert Gates served under every president since Nixon, save Bill Clinton. Republicans and Democrats.

Weakness emboldens aggressors

According to the New York Times article, Joe Biden’s weakness is emboldening our enemies.

Afghanistan:

“There’s going to be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of a embassy,” the president said in July, barely a month before the world saw thousands of Afghans begging to be airlifted from a country surrendering to fanatics.

Russia:

On Monday, The Times’s David Sanger reported that a Russian intelligence agency, the S.V.R., is once again engaged in a campaign “to pierce thousands of U.S. government, corporate and think-tank computer networks,” according to Microsoft cybersecurity experts. This comes just a few months after President Biden personally warned Vladimir Putin against renewing such attacks — while also going easy on the penalties the U.S. imposed for previous intrusions.

Iran:

A “complex, coordinated and deliberate attack,” was how John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary, on Monday described a recent drone assault on a U.S. military outpost in Syria that helps train local allies to fight ISIS. It was carried out with as many as five Iranian drones, launched by Iranian proxies, and conducted with Iran’s aid and blessing.

[…]The Biden administration is still desperate to get Iran back to the negotiating table to sign a nuclear deal that would free up billions of dollars in funding that Tehran can use to conduct more such attacks.

China:

Then there is the sharp and worrying uptick of Chinese military flights approaching Taiwan’s airspace. The idea that Beijing may seek to seize the island democracy by force has moved, in a matter of weeks, from a remote prospect to a distinct possibility.

And while our southern border is unguarded (Democrats oppose the wall, even as they build taxpayer-funded walls around their own homes), then terrorists and criminals can just walk across:

In March, Biden assured the country that the surge in migration was merely seasonal, and that it “happens every single solitary year.” Instead, Border Patrol encounters with migrants reached a record high in the last year.

Biden is not a serious president. He’s governed by his secular left religion. His goal in life is to build his own self-esteem and signal his virtue. The problem is that you (the taxpayers) bear the costs and risks for his self-congratulation.

As if all this were not bad enough, he’s also screwed up the economy, which is how we pay for our military and intelligence operations:

In July, the president dismissed price increases as “expected, and expected to be temporary.” Current headline in The Times: “Rising Prices, Once Seen as Temporary, Threaten Biden’s Agenda.”

Minimally, you can measure a person’s intelligence by judging whether they can achieve what they claim to be able to achieve. Biden has failed to achieve what he said he would achieve. That makes him stupid. And the people who voted for him voted for the stupid candidate.

You would think that foreign policy “experts” like Bret Stephens would be smart enough to predict who would be better at foreign policy, especially with four years of foreign policy wins under Trump. But when you work for the New York Times, it’s almost as if you have to check your brain at the door. These are truly stupid people. They spend the entire election campaign supporting an imbecile for President, then complain that the imbecile they backed got elected.