And, While We Are on the Topic of Sleaze,

Mark Zuckerberg
Photo by Media Matters

...the censoring of various people and groups deemed "politically incorrect" must stop. While the First Amendment gives us some protection from federal government censorship, the giants of Apple, Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc., need to stop their fascist-like behavior.

I am writing this post using an Apple MacBook Pro and I have, personally and as a businessman, spent well over one-hundred thousand dollars on Apple's products. But, I certainly do not like Apple's recent behavior. Hollywood's Roger Simon puts it well:

  Fascist is a big word not to be bandied about (though it too often is these days), so let me make myself clear.  I've spent about ten minutes of my life on InfoWars and think Alex Jones is a boring blowhard of little interest except to those who want to spend their lives worrying about whether there was a second gunman on the Grassy Knoll.

  Nevertheless, the group censorship of Mr. Jones, led by our friends in Cupertino, the makers of the ubiquitous iPhone -- I've had a half-dozen myself and am typing this on a MacBook -- is one of the scarier developments of our time, if not potentially the scariest.

Apple is one hypocritical organization banning the puny Jones.  They -- the first trillion-dollar company -- are the people who are genuflecting to the Chinese, kowtowing (that is definitely the proper word) to Xi Jinping and Co., and making all kinds of accommodations to that totalitarian regime for access to their giant market.

  China is, as most of us know and Apple CEO Tim Cook prefers to ignore, the nation that has for years put their political dissidents in jail, completely censored the press and the Internet, stolen our intellectual property, brutally oppressed Tibetans and other minorities, and, lest we forget, mowed down the democracy demonstrators at Tiananmen.  Alex Jones -- to my knowledge -- has done nothing anyone near as monstrous.

  So what Apple is doing picking on the basically irrelevant Jones is a form of corporate virtual signaling, a particularly dangerous form if you believe in the Bill of Rights.

Roger's entire piece is here. He also makes the point that people like Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook, has more money than sense. He made his money so young and is so insulated that all he knows is virtue signaling and doesn't even understand the wider implications of his actions.

Steve Jobs, for all of his faults, never would have done this.

Google (real motto, "Don't Be Evil") has allegedly tweaked its search engine to make it more difficult to find conservative sites. Facebook...well, go to the posting below.

Microsoft used to believe it was invincible. So, did most economists and analysts. That certainly wasn't the case.

There is a pretty good case that some of this may be a violation of anti-trust laws. But, I'd rather the companies re-think their anti-American values positions and rescind them voluntarily.