Hambone v3.0

Monday Bill of Rights Tribute by Mark Twain

It was March 31, 1873, at the Monday Evening  Club in Hartford, Connecticut where a speaker named Mark Twain was there to deliver a speech on the recipients of the First Amendment, in this case the American Press.

The press has scoffed at religion till it has made scoffing popular. It has defended official criminals, on party pretexts, until it has created a United States Senate whose members are incapable of determining what crime against law and the dignity of their own body is, they are so morally blind.

The press has made light of dishonesty till we have as a result a Congress which contracts to work for a certain sum and then deliberately steals additional wages out of the public pocket and is pained and surprised that anybody should worry about a little thing like that.

A free press is more than free when it is licensed to say any infamous thing it chooses about a private or a public man, or advocate any outrageous doctrine it pleases. The public opinion which should hold it in bounds has itself degraded to its own level.

There are laws to protect the freedom of the press’s speech, but none to protect the people from the press.

and this truism,

Among us, the newspaper is a tremendous power. It can make or mar any man’s reputation.

It has perfect freedom to call the best man in the land a fraud and a thief, and he is destroyed beyond help. Whether [Insert Name] is a liar or not can never be ascertained now but he will rank as one till the day of his death for the newspapers have so doomed him.

In the newspapers of the West you can use the editorial voice in the editorial columns to defend any wretched and injurious dogma you please by paying a dollar a line for it.

That awful power, the public opinion of a nation, is created in America by a horde of ignorant, selfcomplacent simpletons who failed at ditching and shoemaking and fetched up in journalism on their way to the poorhouse.

RTWDT.

Nota Bene:  The use of the word media by Mark Twain in the headline quote is correct.  Its usage goes back into the mid-19th century at least.

 

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56 responses to “Monday Bill of Rights Tribute by Mark Twain”

  1. Texpat Avatar
    Texpat

    Good morning.

    A Washington, D.C. server was recently fired after telling a reporter that she would refuse to serve members of the incoming Trump Administration and GOP affiliates. This controversial incident highlights the growing divide between political ideologies in the workplace and raises concerns about the impact of personal political beliefs on professional conduct.

    Ooops….

    “Recent comments made by a member of staff who had no authority to speak on behalf of our entire restaurant have been, quite rightly, flagged as inappropriate, hostile, intolerant, and unacceptable. This staff member does NOT speak for us as a restaurant,” the restaurant stated.

    1. Super Dave Avatar
      Super Dave

      From the piece;

      “I personally would refuse to serve any person in office who I know of as being a sex trafficker or trying to deport millions of people,” she said. “It’s not, ‘Oh, we hate Republicans.’ It’s that this person has moral convictions that are strongly opposed to mine, and I don’t feel comfortable serving them.”

      A Sex Trafficker? SO She’ll NOT sever Joe Biden, the most prolific Sex Trafficker of our time?

  2. Texpat Avatar
    Texpat

    Just when you thought there couldn’t be any more bad things resulting from Covid “vaccines”.

    A STUDY of millions of citizens shows that covid vaccination ‘significantly increased’ the risks for depression, anxiety, various stress disorders and sleep problems. The same study showed the vaccinations ‘significantly decreased’ the risk for developing bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.

    Two South Korean universities randomly selected more than two million (2,154,189) Seoul citizens aged 20 and older who had received two doses of covid vaccines, and 350,983 unvaccinated subjects. Researchers excluded any with a history of schizophrenia, depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety, dissociative, stress related, somatoform (SSD) or psychosomatic disorders (these are mental health conditions where people experience physical symptoms in response to psychological distress), sleep, eating and sexual disorders. This meant excluding almost half a million in the vaccinated group (435,390) and 42,629 in the unvaccinated group. The final number was 1,718,999 vaccinated subjects and 308,354 non-vaccinated subjects.

    1. Tedtam Avatar
      Tedtam

      I also read a report about elevated risks for heart attacks from the double vaxxed. I am truly concerned for members of my family. The effects from these jabs may not become fully known for several more years.

      Heads should roll. ™

  3. Texpat Avatar
    Texpat

    Americans spent a trillion dollars pretending these people could be transformed into a modern, civilized society. How delusional. The neocons kept telling us it would happen any moment now.

    In Iraq, the government’s lawmakers are considering legislation to lower the acceptable marriage age for girls into single digits. Yes, that’s correct; they are proposing to allow nine-year-old girls, who should be playing with dolls and having tea parties, to be married, with all that entails. “Batta” (not her real name) is one that this happened to, at age 11, and her account is horrifying.

    She was just 11 when she was sold into wedlock with a man 36 years her senior. In the nine years since, she said, she has been r***d, beaten, divorced and returned to her family, who hid her away out of shame and forced her into servitude. 

    Today she is a sex worker in the Iraqi city of Erbil, having moved there recently from the capital, Baghdad.

    Batta said her husband r***d her on their wedding night and regularly beat her before he sent her back to her family three years after they were married. Instead of offering sympathy, they treated her as a pariah, she said.

    In other words, this old pervert used her until he no longer found her titillating – and then sent her back to her family. Her family didn’t exactly kill the fatted calf on her return, either.

    It’s not just one world.

    This is what these Iraqi “lawmakers” want to permit – for girls as young as nine.

    1. Tedtam Avatar
      Tedtam

      But…but…but….it was all okayed by the special messenger of that deity!

      I love watching this guy. I was amazed when he took on Muslims who had no idea that their prophaint took a six year old to wife, then to bed when she was nine. How can they be so ignorant of their own religion?

      ….as I look around at so many so-called “Catholics” in my world….

  4. Super Dave Avatar
    Super Dave

    About the O.C. Piece, RTWDT!!! I wish I could give it more than 5 stars.
    Warming up nicely here on the Farm and we’ll be in the mid 70’s by noon.
    Mornin’ Gang

  5. Super Dave Avatar
    Super Dave

    HA! I posted the Mark Twain piece over yonder and got an immediate response from the FB “Fact Checkers” Liars that said:
    Half True! No, Mark Twain never said to fear the media, but he wasn’t a fan of the press.
    
    And yes there was this;

    During the time period Twain was alive (the mid-nineteenth century to the very early-twentieth century) the term “the media” was not used in the way it is today as there was only one form of mass communication – print.

    1. Tedtam Avatar
      Tedtam

      Badge of Honor

  6. Super Dave Avatar
    Super Dave

    OK this is too funny. December 1977 TV Guide Review of The Love Boat by Robert MacKenzie.

    My idea of Hell is to spend eternity watching 1950’s films starring Sandra Dee, Gale Storm and Doris Day. And when I step out for popcorn they’re showing The Love Boat in the lobby. 😀

    1. GJT Avatar
      GJT

      Fast forward and CNN is on every television set, everywhere you go lol.

  7. squawkbox Avatar
    squawkbox

    Hah. 09:42 FIRST

  8. squawkbox Avatar
    squawkbox

    Michael Berry confirms Edd Hendee

    put his thing down on the freeway.

  9. Dr phil Good-E=1984 Avatar
    Dr phil Good-E=1984

    And when I step out for popcorn they’re showing The Love Boat in the lobby. 

    Ship ahoy.

  10. Texpat Avatar
    Texpat

    When George Washington became president in 1789 he was undoubtedly the most famous and popular man in the young nation of America. But, you know, it’s politics and the smiles and laughter never last very long.

    Two hundred thirty years ago, William Findley, a Revolutionary War hero, farmer and statesman, drew the wrath of Alexander Hamilton over the severe measures the Treasury Department placed on Pennsylvania farmers who opposed the newly enacted federal whiskey excise tax.

    Findley, who lived in Latrobe, petitioned the new government to repeal the 1791 whiskey tax, hoping to avoid violence against those charged with collecting it from farmers.

    The man who drove the British out of the Colonies mustered up troops to put down a rebellion of poor farmers over a whiskey tax.

    By November 1794, things had escalated to the point that then-President George Washington mustered troops and marched them to Pennsylvania to put down the rebellion. Findley went to meet with the commander in chief in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, to persuade him to disband the federal forces.

    Eventually, Washington did, but not before imprisoning some of the farmers and letting them languish in carved-out jail cells without charges for weeks.

  11. Tedtam Avatar
    Tedtam

    I must be getting faster. By the time I finished my prayers, if made 3 full and one single rosary this morning.

  12. Texpat Avatar
    Texpat

    Saturday, high is 32 and the low is 13.
    Sunday, the high will be 24 and the low will be 14.
    Monday, the high is 26 and the low 15.
    Heat wave on Christmas Day at 41 and 31.

    1. wagonburner Avatar
      wagonburner

      Monday-Wednesday here: ~71/~63.

  13. Dr phil Good-E=1984 Avatar
    Dr phil Good-E=1984

    And just like that all the drones are gone.

    they’re yesterday’s psyop.

    on to the next one.
    maybe hundreds of Bigfoots will be sighted all over the country riding the drones.

  14. Texpat Avatar
    Texpat

    ProudArmyBrat on X posted this on Saturday:

    Presidents, and the number of individuals that they have of pardoned, commuted, or rescinded:

    – John F Kennedy: 575

    – Lyndon B Johnson: 1,187

    – Richard Nixon: 926

    – Gerald Ford: 409

    – Jimmy Carter: 566 people + 200K Vietnam War draft evaders

    – Ronald Reagan: 406

    – George H. W. Bush: 77

    – Bill Clinton: 459

    – George W Bush: 200

    – Barack Obama: 1,927

    – Donald Trump: 237

    – Joe Biden: 8,062

    ……and he still has 36 days left!

  15. Texpat Avatar
    Texpat

    You gotta push back hard, really hard.

    The Daily Wire’s lawsuit was filed in federal court in Texas. The State Department tried to have it moved to a Washington, D.C., jury, but the judge denied the motion.

    A State Department apparatus that was created to counter violent terrorists abroad, but instead allegedly worked to suppress Americans’ speech, is “substantially likely” to disband on December 23, the department said in a court filing.

    In February, The Daily Wire sued the State Department along with The Federalist and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton over the Global Engagement Center’s relationship with anti-“misinformation” outfits like

    NewsGuard and the Global Disinformation Index (GDI). The suit alleges that those outfits were focused on suppressing American conservative media, and the Global Engagement Center’s support of these groups violated the First Amendment.

    On Monday, the State Department filed a “notice of case development” to “inform the Court of an upcoming development that is substantially likely to occur on December 23, 2024—termination of the Global Engagement Center.”

  16. Tedtam Avatar
    Tedtam

    Had to go hang for a bit, because sitting long enough to pray and bead put me into spasms again. /sigh/ Just offering it up…

    Anyway, before I go peruse the offerings of the day, one of my sisters texted over the weekend that the murdered CEO was supposed to testify against Pelosi regarding insider trading. Has anyone else heard of this?

  17. Texpat Avatar
    Texpat

    The BOEM is part of the US Department of Interior. This is a genuinely shocking turn of events.

    A government regulator recognizing offshore wind’s destructive environmental effects is as rare as a North Atlantic right whale. But a recent, 600-plus page report from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) admits that the offshore wind development planned for the New York Bight—the triangular area bordered by the New Jersey and Long Island coastlines—may irreversibly harm whales, commercial and recreational fisheries, and seabirds.

     

    The BOEM report is the agency’s first to evaluate the cumulative impacts of offshore wind development. Its authors cite a wide range of potential effects, from negligible (or even beneficial) to major. Acknowledging potentially “major” harms is a radical departure from the agency’s previously accepted Environmental Impact Statements for offshore wind projects, which have always focused on the impacts of individual projects, rather than the cumulative impacts of multiple projects.

  18. Texpat Avatar
    Texpat

    GJT’s earlier comment about CNN reminded me of something. It wasn’t until a few years that I discovered CNN paid big money to airports, train and bus stations to be the exclusive channel in these places. They did the same in millions of doctor’s office waiting rooms, even creating a specially edited health news feed. It never was because the public demanded it.

  19. Tedtam Avatar
    Tedtam

    Finally waddled on over to the C&C:

    Good morning, C&C, it’s Monday! I hope everyone enjoyed a festive weekend. The extended Childers clan baked cookies yesterday, leading to an unavoidable sugar hangover this morning. Our quick roundup today begins with a remarkable Van Jones clip and considers what it represents in the bigger picutre, and ends with the incredibly encouraging return of diplomacy, ushered in by an incoming Trump Administration that is negotiating at a handicap with one hand behind its back—but which is still outperforming Biden’s neocons.

    Sound like fun again today…

  20. Tedtam Avatar
    Tedtam

    First up at C&C: the awakening of the left regarding their popularity status change:

    I’ll bet you never saw this coming. This weekend, the New Yorker ran a demoralized but very important political analytic headlined, “Have the Democrats Become the Party of the Élites?” We’ll start with a hilarious podcast clip making the rounds yesterday. In the short clip, Communist Obamaite Van Jones unironically and emphatically scolded a progressive ally, insisting that “Donald Trump is smarter than all of us.” The clip is amusing enough, but it represents something much bigger, a trend the New Yorker was getting at. Van Jones’ wry, self-deprecating comment manifested a disastrous, deep-ocean political current sweeping progressive confidence out to sea.

    What follows is a dissection of the “my world” glasses that lefty journalists use when discussing Trump. Because they don’t like him, they see Trump as they wish to see him – a racist, bumbling buffoon – and fail to recognize that he’s an accomplished adult. Their bad.

    Also, Trump operates in an arena populated by other accomplished and successful people. People who know how to get things done. Instead of worrying about forcing pronouns on the working folk, Trump’s friend put those working folk to work so they can support their families.

    So when progressives sneer and dismissively call Trump “dumb,” all they achieve is underestimating him and highlighting how unmerited their own arrogance is. Unmerited arrogance, a default assumption of their own moral and intellectual superiority, neatly packaged as “pride,” is the defining characteristic of the modern, pompous progressive brand.

    As they say, pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty something or other before a fall. Paging Dr. Nemesis.

    Yep.

    1. Adee Avatar
      Adee

      “Unmerited arrogance” has a certain ring to it, and it seems to fit quite well.

  21. Tedtam Avatar
    Tedtam

    Continuing from C&C:

    The New Yorker article prominently featured progressive sociologist professor and intellectual author Musa Al-Garbi (a name he adopted after converting to Islam). To Al-Garbi, the problem is simple. “Democrats,” he explained, “have become the party of élites.” He coined the term “symbolic capitalists” to describe modern progressives: academics and professionals who feel intellectually superior to other classes.

    Al-Garbi described the progressive identity as being founded in knowledge (i.e., “symbolic”) capital rather than founded in anything tangible like real-world achievements. He said, “We are valued—overvalued, I would say—for what we know, not for what we make or do in the physical world.”

    See my previous comment. Al-Garbi thinks the Dems have moved into the “symbolic” party of “the people”. They are elites in thought, or so they think.

    Al-Garbi argued that, over the past three decades, the Democratic Party has been transformed from the party of non-symbolic workers to the party of symbolic élites. Worse, the élites find it hard to resist the temptation to sneering condescencion toward people who don’t agree with them. For example, Al-Garbi sarcastically asked, “What’s wrong with you, why can’t you get the pronouns thing right?”

    … “We’ve tried denouncing,” Al-Garbi noted, “we’ve tried coercing, we’ve tried shaming people and implying that they’re backward or pathological, and the modal response to that, unsurprisingly, has been backlash.”

    So, no surprise that there’s backlash.

  22. Tedtam Avatar
    Tedtam

    Childers has more discussion about the growing snobby attitude of the Dems and the predictable pushback. Following that:

    Van Jones’s estimation of Trump was right. Trump is unique, a force unlike anything living progressives have ever faced before. He is not just advancing conservative values. Trump is smashing apart the progressive brand, even its self-identity as a political group.

    And it’s happening at a terrible time. Even worse for progressives, the Democrats have no clear leader, no anti-Trump to help craft a counter-narrative. Let’s say voters accepted progressive’s deranged claims that Trump is a fill-in-the-blank, whatever, but it’s definitely bad and definitely dangerous to democracy. Then who is the Democrats’ alternative?

    Another far-left progressive quoted by the New Republic, Liza Featherstone, a columnist for Jacobin and The New Republic, was recently a panelist at a New York progressive think tank event. “Like a lot of you, I’m depressed about the election,” Liza began. But after researching the fundamentals and reading Al-Garbi’s latest book, “I came away even more depressed . . . convinced that we, as a class, were politically useless.”

    Then Liza really poured on the dark predictions. She said as bad as things were, it was possible that they were about to get much worse. I think it is possible we may witness the complete collapse of progressive politics and a generation in the wilderness for Democrats.

    Make that bed, then lay yo’self down in it.

  23. Tedtam Avatar
    Tedtam

    And completing a (rather spicy) discussion about Trump and his international diplomacy skills (as opposed to Biden/Obama/Deep State variety):

    But Joe Biden has always considered diplomacy to be old-fashioned. Biden’s neocons prefer cowardly, passive-aggressive hijinx instead of talking. Passive-aggressive hijinx like cutting our enemies’ undersea cables, running color revolutions on their smaller allies, or throwing their international yard signs away when they’re not looking.

    But now that Trump has been elected, international relations are returning to a diplomatic status quo ante, where we can once again talk about our problems with our adversaries like adults. Diplomacy is much less likely to result in conflict resolution involving nuclear missiles, nude ones or otherwise, than is dynamiting their deep-sea gas lines and then childishly blaming it on them.

    The adults aren’t back in the White House yet, but they are on their way, and they are already working on the most important stuff. Trump and his team are getting more done with one political arm tied behind their backs to achieve peace than Biden’s neocons have accomplished in four years.

    Adulting. Time to get back to it.

  24. squawkbox Avatar
    squawkbox

    OOOOOOFFF that is gonna leave a mark as Blinken gets his *&& handed to him.

    Pro-Israel Congressman MERCILESSLY GRILL Blinken for Funding Iran

    Now that was fun to watch.

    1. Texpat Avatar
      Texpat

      Watched it 3 times already. Kicked his butt.

      1. squawkbox Avatar
        squawkbox

        One giant pull quote of truth. As i watched it I imagined the old pow bang crash oof graphics in the old batman TV shows.

  25. Texpat Avatar
    Texpat

    Here is the hilarious 1:43 TikTok clip of Van Jones and Chris Cillizza talking Donald Trump.

  26. Dr phil Good-E=1984 Avatar
    Dr phil Good-E=1984

    I read this ozempic article last week.

    also heard there was a recall on metformin in 2022-23 for finding cancer causing chemicals in it above allowed levels

    maybe if we didn’t have 90% of our pharmaceuticals manufactured in communist China, because the blood money suckling Vampyres in congress wanted more cash in their pockets, then things would change.

    https://www.zerohedge.com/medical/new-study-links-ozempic-vision-loss-confirms-harvard-research

  27. Shannon Avatar
    Shannon

    The prognosticators at Decision Desk – looking ahead at the 2026 U.S. Senate elections – at this point find it unlikely that the Dems can flip the Senate.

    The only two Republican incumbent vulnerables are Collins (Maine) and Tillis (NC).
    Vulnerable incumbent Democrats include only Peters (Michigan) and Ossof (Georgia).

  28. squawkbox Avatar
    squawkbox

    DOA?

    1. GJT Avatar
      GJT

      Prognosticators kilt da blog.

      1. Dr phil Good-E=1984 Avatar
        Dr phil Good-E=1984

        Heh

    2. Dr phil Good-E=1984 Avatar
      Dr phil Good-E=1984

      https://youtu.be/kBR08xXPl-o?si=3TgfhGNntwKWRUMm

  29. squawkbox Avatar
    squawkbox

    Y’all gonna force me to post kittens?

  30. Texpat Avatar
    Texpat

    It is a very sad day when Hamous is not here to witness the retirement (metaphorical defenestration) of Paulie Krugman and the impending resignation of Justin Castreaux.

  31. Texpat Avatar
    Texpat

    There are few things more encouraging and amusing than the news the soyboy version of Greta Thunberg is vying to run the Democratic Party. If only I could vote for him. Does the DNC have unguarded drop boxes and mail-in ballots ?

    With their bench being anything but deep and having lost several key constituencies in the 2024 presidential election, Democrats may be on the verge of gaining one more player for their bench, one who could be able to bring at least one of those constituencies back into the fold. On Monday, gun control advocate David Hogg announced he intends to run for Vice Chair of the Democrat National Committee (DNC). 

    1. Tedtam Avatar
      Tedtam

      The camera hogg is their best bet?

  32. GJT Avatar
    GJT

    I saw it mentioned regarding those warning tags on programs like violence, nudity, SMOKING…. I would like a tag telling me this show has graphic gay sex.

  33. Texpat Avatar
    Texpat

    WAIT ! Stop ! Didn’t this guy just pardon his son for federal gun law violations ?

    JUST IN: President Biden releases statement calling for gun control after Wisconsin school shooting

    “Congress must pass commonsense gun safety laws: Universal background checks. A national red flag law. A ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.”

    “We can never accept…

    1. Super Dave Avatar
      Super Dave

      Can you say hypocrisy? BTW; As a rule I’d not be real concerned about lying on the ATF Form #4473 since the law only affects law abiding citizens but with Hunter I made an exception only because his Daddy and all the other Democrats make a big F-ing deal about Universal Background checks. I figure it’s a good thing that he got Hoisted with his own Petard.

  34. Texpat Avatar
    Texpat

    You truly should watch this James O’Keefe undercover video clip with an advisor to the National Security Council who works in the White House.

  35. Texpat Avatar
    Texpat

    Six seconds to realize this is not your father’s military.

    Pete Hegseth has a big job ahead of him.

  36. Adee Avatar
    Adee

    Ummm, the opening of the Comments features a what?

  37. squawkbox Avatar
    squawkbox

    Markous Hamouson says:

    #2 After the fall, I just want to be on the team that tars and feathers Paul Krugman and runs him out of town on a rail.

  38. squawkbox Avatar
    squawkbox

    Where is

  39. Texpat Avatar
    Texpat

    Hey, Squawk, have you been banned from BlueSky yet ? I was thinking about going over there and setting a timer to see how long I would last.

    1. squawkbox Avatar
      squawkbox

      LOL not yet. Set your record and I will beat it, legit

  40. Super Dave Avatar
    Super Dave

    Busy, busy, busy, I mentioned getting the Christmas tree the other day and yes we’re way behind in getting the Christmas decorations up but we got the tree decked out yesterday and the lights on the front of this house. Today I put the wreaths on both gates and strung lights on the fence at the side gate by the west 40. Sister showed up unexpectedly about 4 PM and since Monday is Burn’t Dawgs Day, she had one for good measure. But I didn’t think she’d ever leave. 😀 Jus’ kidding but that is what my wife said.
    Oh and the weather is fabulous, we hit 78 today with plenty of sunshine.

  41. Super Dave Avatar
    Super Dave

    Oh and I’m not tired of winning yet. 😉

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