Sarasota Magazine’s Article on “Right-Wingers” Flynn and Me Earns a C-

The first time I saw Noam Chomsky speak was in the summer of 1986 at Princeton University. I was working that summer in an AI lab called “HIP”, started by Professor George A. Miller. It is commonly said that Dr. Miller was the founder of Cognitive Science, and Chomsky was often mentioned as his partner in that context. I had read a couple of Chomsky’s political books by that point, and accepted George’s suggestion to see his former collaborator in action (with his admonition, “Noam is a brilliant man, but he is not a particularly honest man”).  

In the Q&A session that followed the talk, someone asked Chomsky about being a “radical”. I will never forget his answer: “What does the word ‘radical’ even mean today? Our discourse has become so debased, it means nothing more than, “something we’re not supposed to like, something that should scare us.”

In the course of the generation and a half since then, the same has come to be true of the phrase, “right-wing”. At this point it is used with abandon, but with no more specificity than, “something we’re not supposed to like.”

Fine example of this tendency has been provided by the staff of Sarasota Magazine in their execrable article of March 1, 2020: “Bigwig Right-Wing Activists and Influencers Have Discovered Sarasota”. Though the phrase “right-wing” is used in the title (and “new right” in the subtitle), in the entire piece no attempt is made to explain what “right-wing” means and why it fits the people named in the article (of whom Mike Flynn, Doug Logan, and myself find ourselves).

So for the record:

Michael Flynn is a near-lifelong Democrat, an offspring of a classic Irish-Catholic family from the coast between Providence, Rhode Island and Boston, Massachusetts. He abandoned the Democratic Party during the Obama presidency, from which he was terminated for refusing to support to Congress the President’s contention that ISIS was “the JV squad”. General Flynn wrote a book and became an adviser to the outsider campaign of Donald Trump, and was briefly his National Security Adviser (before being set-up by the FBI: a later investigation by a retired judge working for the DOJ concluded that government’s fundamental Brady obligations had been neglected and the entire prosecution had been inappropriate). Mike Flynn’s social views are open, tolerant, and concerned with the welfare of the great mass of Americans rather than the elites. Mike believes that the November 2020 election was rigged.

Doug Logan is a man I know at a distance. I know Doug to be a superb full-stack cybersecurity expert with talents far beyond those of typical election “audits” (which are extraordinarily cursory). I know him to be a calm, rather mild fellow, that he has about a dozen children, and cares very much for the future of the United States.  Doug also believes that the election of 2020 was rigged, and I am sure he would be just as enervated about that possibility no matter which side of the aisle was responsible for the rigging.

As for myself: I am a lifelong libertarian (note the small “l”) who has never voted Republican or Democrat for president in my life. The article correctly notes that I believe the election of November 2020 was rigged and that I funded some of Doug’s efforts.

So as far as I can tell, what qualifies we three for the epithet “right-wing” in the eyes of the (bravely unidentified) writers of this piece, is that we doubt the integrity of Election 2020. No attempt is made to explain why doubting election integrity makes one “right-wing”. Nor is note taken that only @ 25% of Americans will tell a pollster that they believe Joe Biden was elected President without fraud (the rest believe that fraud was “significant” or “very significant” or they are unsure). Thus, if Sarasota Magazine holds to its definition, they presumably believe that 75% of Americans are “right-wing”.

Other than its highly ideological use of the phrase “right-wing” to mean (as Chomsky put it) “something that we are not supposed to like,” I see no other content within the Sarasota Magazine article worth commenting upon. However, the article was well-organized and readable, so I will grant them a low but passing grade.

Total
0
Shares
38 comments
  1. Thanks for the info Dr. Byrne. It’s amazing how some people take a few simplistic data items about another person then use those items to stick that person into a little box, convenient wrt their argument. More amazing is how the majority can’t see it happening.
    Best,
    Steve Hunter, Breckenridge CO

  2. Patrick I was a bit surprised that they said you had a PhD in a math-related field – elsewhere it says philosophy – because it seems to me that you don’t do the math part of your investigations very well. Is the article correct?

    Also I do criticise a lot of what you post here – and I have more in stock (I might even be overstocked LOL) – but I only come across as abrasive because I think you are way wrong, and I can’t let your posts go unchallenged, because democracy and public health are too important, so it is not out of meanness or partisanship.

    1. Every message board needs a primary troll. A complete and utter tool that has nothing better to do with their time than to talk trash.

      1. Glad to be of service. However I am not actually trolling. It just looks that way as I disagree with the prevailing wisdom here. I’ve tried to back up everything I say with facts and arguments. Usually the response is that I am wrong, but with no substance behind it, or simply called names. Like troll, or tool.

        1. Oh OK. You are a know-it-all piss-ant who wants to dish out criticism but can’t take any. I respond to your comment about Dr. Byrne not doing math well and say you are a troll and you say I’m not trolling. Lmao. The man has accomplished more than you ever will and you insult him. That’s trolling. You have never once offered a solution or idea to solve anything. I’m sorry you already know everything. That must be a horrible burden.

          1. Who says I can’t take criticism? I’ve pointed out math issues before. Calling me names is not really criticism. Patrick made a point earlier that he’s a real doctor. PhDs are expected to get the details right, check the facts, consider and discuss counter arguments. He’s posted incomplete or misleading information here lots of times and I’ve pointed it out. That’s where you should be going after me. Bring it!

            By the way, it would be great if you used a consistent name like anon1 or something so I have some sense of who I’m talking to.
            Regards

    2. Yep, Sarasota Mag spelled your name wrong a couple of times (I’d be salty if someone called me “Bryne” lol) and gave you the wrong PhD. “Jealousy and Confidence: An Essay on the Limits of Authority” is not about math logic (unless it refers to the numerical limits of authority! double lol)

      Maybe a C–?

  3. The Tilda ~ is used to mean “about”
    The @ is used to mean “at”
    You wrote @ 25%, I believe you meant ~ 25%

  4. Anyway, that was me making nice. Now back to shelling your cities.

    The statement that only “@ 25%” [sic] of Americans believe Joe Biden was legitimately elected seems low – the Guardian quoted an Axios poll that said 55%, but in any event, whatever the figure is, the number of people who doubt he was elected fairly is only is high as it is, because of Trump, and Patrick and others shouting it incessantly – it’s Goebbels 101. Trump started laying the ground work, by claiming he was possibly going to be cheated out of an election victory in 2016 (he wasn’t, duh) so you’ve been hearing it for a long time. And Patrick already pointed out that Trump is a serial crook, so I’d take what he says with a grain of salt.

  5. Anyway, that was me making nice. Now back to shelling your cities.

    The statement that only “@ 25%” [sic] of Americans believe Joe Biden was legitimately elected seems low – the Guardian quoted an Axios poll that said 55%, but in any event, whatever the figure is, the number of people who doubt he was elected fairly is only as high as it is, because of Trump, and Patrick and others shouting it incessantly – it’s Goebbels 101. Trump started laying the ground work, by claiming he was possibly going to be cheated out of an election victory in 2016 (he wasn’t, duh) so you’ve been hearing it for a long time. And Patrick already pointed out that Trump is a serial crook, so I’d take what he says with a grain of salt.

    1. I take what you say with a grain of salt. You have done less to persuade the jury that Dr. Byrne is wrong than you have to persuade the jury that you are a jackass. By the way, it would be great if you would condense and organize your thoughts into one cohesive response instead of a half dozen rants. Sometimes more isn’t better.

      1. As I mentioned to one “anonymous” poster the other day – possibly you – I am working full time and trying to post when I can, as I assume many of you are. Also you can’t edit posts, and sometimes they don’t get uploaded without a slight delay, and the draft is still visible on backspacing, so I occasionally accidentally double post, or have to add a comment or two, because I mistyped a post and can’t correct it, or I respond to a new post in the sequence.

        There are many times I have pointed out where Patrick is misinformed or has formed the wrong conclusions. I do have draft post recapping of many of these which I have been preparing and will post when complete (if ever!!) However it is tedious to go back through this website finding my own previous posts and those of others, and adding weblinked references, so it is taking a while. This is not my main activity!

        Just briefly, he has submitted data claiming to show Sweden’s less restrictive COVID policies were a good choice (they actually have a higher death rate than the other Scandinavian countries) or they didn’t have an Omicron surge (it started the next day) or that the death rate in unvaccinated Brits is lower than in vaccinated Brits 20-59 (because it wasn’t age corrected and the unvaccinated were way younger) or supporting Stephen Miller’s statistics (garbage in, garbage out, and Matt Braynard gave him garbage data to analyse) or mocking and trying to recalculate Emma Brown’s stats on how many Republicans disbelieve the election results, when the link to her source was right in the article and he didn’t bother to click it, and a few others. I’ll do my best to give a full report and not just this executive summary, in a few days.

    1. if anyone thinks I am being too harsh on Chomsky,just listen to the dangerous nonsense he speaks in the video posted above and you might see that I was being very mild and holding back with the words I was tempted to write.

    2. A few comments on that Dore video. In the first few seconds, Dore was honest enough (or dumb enough) to show most of the tweet by Slavitt, but he only commented on the first part: eventually everyone will get the virus – OK, maybe – and then ignores the second part which is that the vaccine and other precautions have stopped it from killing or permanently harming vast numbers of the people who get it.
      Regarding “everybody’s going to get it”, well, basically all along, the purpose of the vaccine and any other precautions (mandated or not) was two-fold: to “flatten the curve” so the hospital system wouldn’t be overwhelmed by rapid spread and mass hospitalization all at once, and become completely non-functional – as happened disastrously in Italy, for example – and secondly, to make the virus overall less deadly so a lot fewer people in total would die or suffer prolonged consequences when they caught it.
      And these strategies have worked, but perhaps not as successfully as they could have with better public uptake. By the time “everybody [got] it” millions of lives had been saved due to:
      – hospital and ICU beds being available for many of the people who needed admission and ventilators,
      – many people’s exposure being delayed until they got on or more doses of vaccine, and
      – many people’s exposure being delayed until the milder omicron variant showed up, 2 years late to the party. This wouldn’t have happened if the pandemic had simply been allowed to run unhindered.
      As for Chomsky, Dore plays a clip where he says unvaccinated people should be encouraged and expected to stay away from everyone else. When asked if this separation should be mandatory, he says only if its really dangerous, and he gave the example of smallpox, a disease that killed between 50% and 90% of people exposed to it. He didn’t say it should happen now, and in fact made a point of stating that that that was a separate issue. Later he is asked a hypothetical, about how mandatory separation would work, and he answered it. Again, he didn’t say it should be implemented now.
      By the way, do you know anybody who had smallpox? Or had polio and is under 70? Was in an iron lung? Lost all 4 kids to diphtheria? Died in horrible suffering thanks to tetanus or rabies?
      No?
      Yeah!! Vaccines rule!!

      1. Maybe we should all stop driving for 2 weeks to flatten the curve? Would that lower gas prices?

        https://www.swfinstitute.org/news/91484/scientists-discover-dna-chunk-in-covid-that-matches-moderna-patented-sequence-from-before-pandemic

        Real simple. Release a virus –> use it to rig an election –> manipulate the economy through fear, mandates, and lockdowns –> Cause inflation, raise taxes, and control the flow of money –> Repeat.

        What’s so hard to understand?

        1. That Moderna DNA claim is extremely sketchy.

          DNA is written in a language with only 4 letters – C, G, T and A,and all organism that have DNA, have DNA chains comprised of thousands or millions of these 4 letters . The covid-19 virus has a DNA chain of 30,000 letters, and in there, there is a one, 19 letter segment in there that happens to match a 19 letter segment in a 3300 letter DNA sequence patented by Moderna in the hopes of developing a new, genetically based cancer treatment. There is mention in the linked article that the likelihood of that happening by chance is 1 in 3 trillion.

          Of course, that is nonsense, and typical of widespread misunderstanding and abuse of mathematics. One in 3 trillion (actually 1 in 300 million – they didn’t even get that right) is the odds you would come up with that exact 19 letter sequence if you only had one chance to guess it. The chance that you will find that the same 19 letter sequence buried somewhere within two strands of DNA that are both thousands and thousands of letters long, is much higher, and the people who found that match searched thousands of DNA samples before they found one that happened to share a tiny segment with the covid virus, and they didn’t even find all the matches – there are several more examples of that 19 letter sequence being seen in the DNA of other naturally occurring organism.

          So the notion that the match couldn’t have happened by chance and is deliberate or evidence of a laboratory blunder, is nonsense. To get a sense of what I mean, consider this: Suppose you have a reasonably strong and long password. What are the chances somebody could guess it in one try, with no hints of clues? Pretty much nil. What are the chances somebody out there has password that partially overlaps with yours, and contains a sequence of several characters in a row that matches a sequence of several characters in a row in your password? Pretty high.

          Plus to fit your conspiracy theory, that this was deliberate, Moderna or some other bad actor would have had to figure out which 19 character segment of their 3300 character cancer-fighting genetic sequence needed to be cut out and pasted into a covid virus, and exactly where, in order to make it contagious and cause a pandemic, and then bribe or kill any involved staff who might be whistleblowers, and then – well, you can probably take it from there. It just did not happen that way.

          To get a sense of what I mean, consider this. Suppose you have a reasonably strong 7 character password. What are the chances somebody could guess it in one try, with no hints of clues? Pretty much nil. What are the chances somebody out there has password that contains a sequence of several characters in a row that matches a sequence of characters in your password? Pretty high.

          1. 19 is now several? If you can stretch several into 19 what else can you stretch?

            You say, “what are the chances somebody has a password that partially overlaps with yours, and contains a sequence of several characters in a row that matches a sequence of several characters in a row in your password? Pretty high.”

            So 1 in 300 million is pretty high?

            Your logic is nonsense, and typical of widespread misunderstanding and abuse of reason and common sense.

          2. Can’t reply directly to Anonymous so replying to my own post;
            Anonymous said:
            “So 1 in 300 million is pretty high?
            Your logic is nonsense, and typical of widespread misunderstanding and abuse of reason and common sense.”

            Oops – my error. Actually it is 1 in 300 *billion*. A 3 followed by 11 zeros. Sounds ridiculously excessive, yes? But it’s ridiculously wrong. That’s the odds against two 19-item random sequences of DNA matching off the bat The original authors did the math wrong, so we’ve already gotten rid of 1 zero. You can check for yourself. The formula is quite simple: 1/4~19. Another use for the tilde!

            The DNA segments that were compared were not 19 bases long, they were each many thousands of bases long, allowing for thousands of overlapping 19 base segments to be compared, so that removes a few more zeros. The covid genome wasn’t just compared to one Moderna sample, it was run against a library of millions of DNA samples – that alone cancels at 6 zeros, never mind that probably all of the entries were also much longer than 19 bases, further improving the odds of finding a match.

            And DNA sequences aren’t actually random – some letters, and letter pairs or trios, are more common than others, also increasing the chance of a match.

            So by now you be seeing zeroe being lopped off that 300 billion number, faster than cucumber slices at the hands of Hiroyuki Terada https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-xEYDT7PpI

            My example of the password was simply intended to illustrate this concept. That the odds change drastically as you add more conditions.

            And a couple other real-life matches for that 19 base sequence have been found, indicating retroactively, that the odds of matching a 19 base section of the covid virus gene to another DNA strand, are better than even.

            So much for 3 trillion to 1.

            https://healthfeedback.org/claimreview/short-identical-gene-sequence-sars-cov-2-and-gene-sequence-patented-moderna-found-in-other-organisms-not-evidence-virus-engineered-daily-mail/

      2. My previous reply was censored,so there is nothing more for me to say as I don’t want to waste any more time.

        1. Probably not censored. There can be a delay before new posts appear, or you might have not hit the final “submit” button, or it might be attributed to “anonymous” if you accidentally didn’t enter your name – all of those have happened to me and caused temporaryy confusion. Was it the one about stopping driving for two weeks to flatten the curve?

        2. Well, if Patrick “Bryne” isn’t censoring me, its pretty unlikely he is censoring you! So hopefully it was an accidental loss and will turn up, or you will resubmit

          1. Oops, I did it too! That was me saying if Patrick isn’t censoring me, he isn’t censoring you

          2. I don’t think Patrick is censoring me.I think almost all of my posts that did not show up were posts that had links to rumble,odysee or bitchute.The posts with links are probably up for review and some of them probably get lost in the abyss and are never reviewed so they will never be shown.

        3. Maybe you are right. I submitted a long follow up on DNA match item last night, and got a message that my post was “awaiting moderation” and it hasn’t appeared

  6. I am encouraged by Michael Flynn’s plea to have record turnout in the primaries this year.
    I hope that he would consider the importance of having a specific policy platform for We The People to promote and rally behind ASAP.
    I would not expect him to necessarily support this platform,but hopefully he would publicly support something similar.

    TruthFreedomPeace Platform:

    Imagine there was someone running for President and Congress in your state that supported the following policy platform:

    1)Adopting an accurate,fair and transparent voting system, one where any citizen can verify their vote was counted accurately.

    2)Replacing the income tax with Fair Tax or National Sales Tax or nothing

    3)Securing the border,(Land,Air,Sea)

    4)Ending the phony war on drugs, which currently causes more crime,death,murder,gang violence,incarcerations,enriching criminals while millions of people still use illegal drugs anyway.

    5)Support IMMEDIATE pardons for Julian Assange,Edward Snowden and non-violent Vaccine mandate protesters and election fraud protesters & other
    whistleblowers/truthtellers.

    6)Making generic drugs like Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine available over the counter without prescription.

    7)NO vaccine mandates

    8)Sound money $ .

    9) Request that all people in all states hold a vote regarding the issue of abortion.

    Remind everyone that many people object to abortion because a fetus is a human being and they object to them being killed in the womb for the same reason they object to that same human being being killed after they are delivered from their mother’s womb.
    Ask everyone to please stop killing innocent human beings in the womb.

    10)A new foreign policy where rather than military occupation in foreign lands, We The People worldwide unite behind and promote the principles of truth/freedom/goodwill/integrity/humility/Non-Aggression Principle/Golden Rule and focus on winning hearts and minds.
    A worldwide effort to voluntarily help others in the hope that it will win over more people to these principles.

    Would you vote for such a person?I am not running for any office.

    The point is, achieving real change will probably require that people start making demands for the support of a list of policies that ANY POLITICIAN INCLUDING TRUMP need to endorse and publicly advocate for in order to earn the vote of the people,IMO.

    Please let any candidate that you are considering supporting know what policies are important to you and demand specifics for them to earn your vote.

    And of course it would also require making sure elected officials back up words with action after stating support for certain policies.

    This is why I believe supporting , promoting and rallying behind a platform of policies is MUCH more important right now than promoting individual politicians and their vague claims of “vote for me and I’ll make things better”.

    I would support an individual politician when they endorse and publicly advocate for a platform similar to the one above.

    Keep in mind that a platform like this could even become popular in countries worldwide because of the internet and I believe that many people throughout the world would support a platform like this.

    The keyboard is mightier than the sword.

    Below is the link to share this platform,if you agree.Thank You.

    https://www.minds.com/newsfeed/1336320758019788808

    1. Some may disagree about ending the phony war on drugs so please hear me out on this explanation of why I think it’s very important.
      I don’t use any illegal drugs and don’t recommend anyone use them.

      However, ending the phony war on drugs would greatly benefit the peaceful citizens of the world.
      The biggest customers and financiers of the drug cartels who terrorize peaceful citizens in this hemisphere are certain folks from the USA.

      We The People should constantly remind our fellow citizens of this to hopefully get them to join in demanding an end to this phony,incredibly destructive policy.

      The phony “War on Drugs” causes more crime,death,murder,gang violence,incarcerations,enriching criminals while millions of people still use illegal drugs anyway.
      This current policy is a disgrace and politicians(actors) are not interested in solving this problem.

      The 3 choices as possible solutions are:
      A) Legalize and treat like alcohol
      B) Drug testing
      C)Both of the above
      Let the states and the people decide like the Constitution says.

      Keep in mind that although alcohol is legal,its sale (no sales to minors) & use is regulated (DUI laws/employers can discriminate against alcohol use at work)
      Why not just treat drugs like alcohol?Either solution is better than the current policy.

      The reason I refer to the war on drugs as “phony” is simple. If politicians really believed that people MUST be prevented from using more dangerous illegal drugs they would be advocating for more drug testing and secure boders (land/air/sea)as that is the only rational way to prevent most people from using such drugs.

      Their bluff is called.

  7. Hi Patrick,
    Have you been following the action with the convoy in Hagerstown Md? Mike Landis and Brian Brase and everyone there are doing an excellent job, learning on the fly. The racetrack is a great spot, hope the owners will allow an extended stay. This might take months. It’s been a lot of physical work setting up camp. Anything your group could offer to Brian or Mike might be useful. A secondary prowler base camp closer to DC just for a subset of bobtails might be nice, saves time and money and opens Hagerstown to more pedestrians as the camp improves…facilities, live music, by the way the live streamers get shut down on youtube etc, copyrite and misinfo… The convoy is exponentially growing the freedom movement. Frytv now on youtube aggregates convoy live streamer. I’m just a convoy worker bee and the convoy folks probably are ahead of me. Anything your team can offer the convoy leaders might be appreciated. I have the feeling your group is already involved. I hope your are doing well and thankyou to all the patriots working to rid the pestilence from our lands.

  8. Regarding election integrity,I don’t see any better way than a system where every voter gets receipts for their votes that have a unique serial number.

    Hope that more people will start to demand fair,accurate and transparent elections in which EVERY CITIZEN CAN VERIFY THEIR VOTES WERE COUNTED ACCURATELY.

    You get a receipt for buying a pack of gum,but not for your votes?
    Does this make sense to you??

    It seems to me the solution would be a voting system that perhaps had both an electronic,blockchain vote AND a paper vote cast simultaneously in which the electronic ballots and paper ballots were counted separately to expose any discrepancies / fraud.

    Voatz system seems to be a good solution which accomplishes this which I first heard about years ago when Patrick Byrne mentioned it when he was CEO of Overstock.

    Does anyone really believe that people involved in politics and elections (or people in general) are fair,honest and unbiased and they should just be trusted “counting” votes using the current election systems ?

    Who in the world,other than corrupt,dishonest people, would be against an election system where every voter could verify their vote was counted accurately??

    Here is excerpt from Voatz website:

    “HOW VOATZ WORKS How do voters confirm that their votes are counted? Once a voter submits a ballot, three distinct records are created that allow a voter to verify their vote is recorded and counted as they intended.
    Ballot Receipt: Soon after voting, a voter receives an encrypted, anonymized receipt to verify their selections. This receipt is password protected and signed with an anonymous ID (only the voter knows this password and anonymous ID).
    Paper Ballot: A paper ballot is generated and printed at the jurisdiction for tabulation. This paper ballot is signed with the same anonymous ID, and this paper ballot constitutes the record being counted.
    Blockchain Record: All ballot selections pass through multiple, distributed nodes on a public-permissioned blockchain network. If the votes pass all checks, they are stored as a tamper-resistant record alongside all other votes.”

    “There is an additional step a voter can take to verify their vote(s). Once the election closes, the voter has the opportunity to participate in a public citizens’ audit, where all ballot receipts, paper ballots and blockchain data are compared to ensure voter intent is reflected in the overall election count. For more information about the Voatz post-election audit process, view the video on the Security & Technology page of our website.”

    https://voatz.com/how-it-works/

    https://new.voatz.com/2019/10/03/when-you-vote-how-do-you-know-it-counts/

  9. Does this mean that you are in Scarysota now? spent 15 years there and still have family there. A former in-law of mine was quite infamous down there, he was dubbed the mini-Madoff. I wonder if a certain bank having a branch there had any influence on your choice.

    We would call Scarysota paradise, but even paradise has it’s problems.

    P. S. If you a boat mechanic, one of the best in town is personal friend.

Leave a Reply to RoberG Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Previous Article

Memo to Woke Flag Officers of DOD: Re-Read AR 600-20

Next Article

Patrick Byrne Statement to J6 Committee Regarding December 18 Oval Office and January 4-6 Events

Related Posts
Total
0
Share