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Americans political preferences shifted dramatically over 2021, swinging from a nine percentage-point lead for Democrats at the beginning of the year to ending with a five-point advantage for Republicans, according to a poll released Monday.

In the first quarter of 2021, 49 percent of Americans said they identified as a Democrat or leaned Democratic, while 40 percent identified as Republican or leaned Republican, according to a Gallup survey.

The Democrats lead over the GOP was the highest since the fourth quarter of 2012.

The percentage for Democrats remained unchanged at 49 percent going into the second quarter, but the percentage for Republicans ticked up three percentage points.

Then in thethird quarter, Republicans topped Democrats 45 percent to 44 percent a trend that continued through the final three months of 2021.

Republicans ended the year with a 47 percent to 42 percent advantage over Democrats.

The reversal appears to track President Bidens downward slide in the polls that began in July and August because of the disastrous US military withdrawal from Afghanistan and the sputtering economy a decline thatculminated in record low numbers for Biden by the end of the year.

The pollster noted that the GOP has held a five-point lead in only four quarters since it began measuring party identification in 1991, one of them occurring after the 1994 midterm elections when Republicans gained control of Congress for the first time since 1952.

Gallup attributed the shifting preferences to the changing poll numbers over the year for Biden and former President Donald Trump.

While Trumps job approval ratings fell to 34 percent in January the lowest of his term Biden was enjoying ratings in the mid-50s after his inauguration on Jan. 20.

By December, Bidens job approval ratings had plummeted to around 40 percent, brought down by a surge in coronavirus cases, increasing inflation and a stalled legislative agenda.

The survey results are based on aggregated data from interviews with 12,000 randomly sampled adults during the year, Gallup said.

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Party preferences shifted from Dems to GOP in 2021, survey finds - New York Post

Democrats have notoriously attempted to throw the Heisman hands at their policies when they turn south and point the finger to the Republicans, case in point:

Gerrymanderinglike the Ku Klux Klan, segregation of the Armed Forces, ending of Reconstruction, Jim Crow, current-day voting restrictions, and the list goes onare all creations of, you guessed it, the Democrat Party.

The so-called attempt to disenfranchise minorities through gerrymandering has the Democrats' DNA all over it, and if you know your history, you'd understand this statement. Full stop, a non-political assertion, the Democrats invented gerrymandering. Have you ever wondered where the name gerrymandering originated? Unfortunately, the answer does not live in textbook materials in your middle school civics book; however, it does live in a multitude of literature that is easily accessible courtesy of the internet.

The word "gerrymander" originated when theBoston Gazettepublished a political cartoon depicting a newly drawn serpent-like district in Massachusetts by Jeffersonian Republicans, formally known today as the Democrat Party. The man who signed off on this politicalized map (although admittedly reluctant) was the then governor of the commonwealth and future fifth vice president of the United States, a man by the name Eldridge Gerry. Oppositionists in the press quickly reacted and labeled the political move "The Gerry Mander," a play on the governor's last name and the shape of the newly created district that resembled a salamander. This name lives on till this day.

The practice of gerrymandering would continue through the late 18th and 19th centuries, but the method remarkably increased when Black men gained access to vote. Democrat-controlled states in the South drew partisan districts to maximize the electoral edge for the White southern-supported Democrats, rather than the Black-supported GOP. The tactic arranged for bizarre-shaped sections intended to concentrate Black voters in one district, thus cementing white-majority districts. One of the most egregious examples of this was the creation of the "boa constrictor" district in the Democrat-controlled state of South Carolina. This racist and absurd formation sliced and slithered the state into one snake-like area of Black Americans (the majority residents), leaving the rest as a safehold for white South Carolinians.

It wasn't until the Republican-appointed Chief Justice Earl Warren ruled that all state voting districts must have roughly equal populations. Under this ruling, the Court also added that states must update their federal congressional districts every ten years and that each of the 435 members represented that same number of citizens. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 (notably receiving more "no" votes from Democrats than Republicans) also helped ensure more equitable districts.

You see, the Democrats can run, but they cannot hide from the truth when it comes to gerrymandering their fingerprints are all over it.

As nearly half of all states have approved their new districts based on the latest census, we see more glaring examples of Democrats crying foul while being the primary abusers of the politicization of this practice. Look no further than the state of Illinois, where Democrats dominate the process and have historically manufactured figure eight-like districts that benefit their party.

Look, neither side of the aisle is entirely innocent when drawing partisan lines. As a Republican, I am well aware of both successful and unsuccessful attempts to taint the process with politicsbut it is grossly disingenuous for the Democrats to deny their longstanding history as the main contributors of gerrymandering. For example, in 2022 alone, the Democrat-controlled Assembly in Maryland all but erased the sole Republican district in the state, the worst offenders in Illinois essentially Christmas-treed their districts to secure their majorities and pin Republican members against each other, and in New Mexico, the Democrats shifted an R+14 CD to a D+4 CD drastically impacting my Republican colleague, Yvette Herrell of the 2nd District.

Racial divisions are the Democrats' one-trick pony in politics. They will pull every trick up their sleeves to deceive the American people into believing that minorities in America live in the times of the past. In recent elections, minorities voted in record numbers with some leaving the Democrat Party and voting for conservative ideals. The myth about Republicans' role in disenfranchising minorities through gerrymandering is a shell game from the Democrats' ongoing efforts to cling onto political power. When you think of gerrymandering, think Democrat Partythe two are inseparable.

Byron Donalds represents Floridas 19th District.

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Democrats created gerrymanderingthey must own it | TheHill - The Hill

In early December 2021, Palestinians and Arabs representing a diversity of creative, activist and academic practice approached the board of Sydney festival after it was revealed the board had accepted $20,000 funding from the Israeli embassy for the presentation of Sydney Dance Companys realisation of Decadance, a work created by Israeli choreographer Ohad Naharin of the Batsheva Dance Company of Tel Aviv. The amount gave the embassy star partnership status with Sydney Festival.

We made three requests: divest from the star partnership, end all relations with the State of Israel, and remove any Israeli government emblem from Sydney festivals promotional material.

In arguing our case for divestment, we said Arab and Palestinian communities would not participate in a festival that does business with a state that stands credibly accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity, according to crimes defined in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. In 2021, Human Rights Watch found Israel is committing crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution.

We made it clear artists and arts organisations fundamental partners in any arts festival felt betrayed by Sydney festival. Finally, we pointed out this partnership denied artists an environment of cultural safety, leaving artists, creatives and companies with no choice but to withdraw.

Our arguments were rejected by the board on the grounds Sydney festival is a non-political organisation. In response, Palestinians and a cross-section of artists, arts organisations and communities publicly called for a boycott of the Sydney festival, inspired and guided by the global Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, founded and led by Palestinian civil society.

The effusive response to the boycott call has been unprecedented, in fact historic. It is being cited as the most effective, creative and impactful campaign targeting complicit Israeli sponsorship of an international arts event in Australia, and indeed one of the most successful in the world.

The backlash to this artist-led cultural boycott has been predictable, indeed recycling arguments used in the 1980s against the boycott of apartheid South Africa.

One criticism in particular exposes how liberalisms conceits of free speech, marketplace of ideas, open debate and dialogue is weaponised against Palestinians to shut down their right to resist and to deny them permission to narrate as renowned Palestinian-American professor Edward Said famously argued in 1984.

According to New South Wales arts minister Ben Franklin, it is the boycott not the actions of Sydney festival which shut down specific creative voices simply on account of their nationality, acting as a kind of censorship.

In an opinion piece published in the Australian, federal arts minister Paul Fletcher described those involved in the boycott as Stalinist censors and Hamas useful idiots. Such contrived hysteria over the boycott stultif[ying] and suppress[ing] artistic and creative excellence, and laughable comparisons with Stalinist Russia, are amusingly desperate claims and demonstrate just how rattled Israels defenders are in the face of incontrovertible daily evidence of that states brutality.

The arguments are embarrassing and spurious. Organisers have repeatedly stated the cultural boycott aims at institutions not individuals, targeting complicity, not identity. There was never any attempt to shut down the actual production of Decadance. The target of the boycott call was Sydney festival as a cultural institution for its refusal to divest from its sponsorship and therefore its complicity with the State of Israel.

That Palestinians and their supporters are being forced to explain and restate the basis and terms of the boycott call, only to be ignored and misrepresented is a form of censorship itself. Whose voices are privileged: those who defend oppression or those resisting it?

Those arguing against the boycott claim boycotts burn rather than build bridges. At the first meeting with the board, artists made the crucial point bridges must be built on ethical and just foundations. A star partnership with the State of Israeli is one way to destroy these foundations and for this reason artists cannot, in good conscience, cross that bridge.

The boards refusal to listen to artists is a form of silencing.

The weaponising of censorship against the boycott is hollow because the ministers conveniently ignore questions of power and privilege. The power dynamics between artists and the board of Sydney festival, between marginalised communities and the monocultural establishment, between individuals and institutions are key critical points of reflection here.

What makes these censorship allegations even more disingenuous is the fact that in the same breath as Palestinians and their allies are accused of being censorious, opposition arts spokesperson, Labors Walt Secord called for legislation to cut off funding to arts organisations that participate in a boycott of Israel. Freedom of expression it seems is only afforded to those in power and with power.

Those who attack cultural boycotts in the name of free speech are invariably missing in action when Palestinians are routinely censored, bullied and cancelled for daring to speak their truth. Certainly they remain silent and indifferent to the violent suppression of Palestinian arts and culture, on the raids, lawfare and intimidation of Palestinian artists and artistic and cultural institutions.

This is precisely why the boycott of Sydney festival has been called and indeed, why it has been so impactful and effective.

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Calling the Sydney festival boycott censorship is a disingenuous attempt by those in power to silence Palestinians - The Guardian

Internet access brings a lot of advantages such as enabling people to gain access to information with just a few taps of their finger. Many people are starting to call access to the internet a basic human right because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up allowing people to earn money as well as educate themselves in a manner that just hadnt been all that possible previously in human history due to technological barriers and limitations.

With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that a lot of world governments dont really seem to care about that and are trying to block social media access. This can be a really big problem for the world, and a really unfortunate trend that has been noticed is that the level of social media censorship that the world is seeing is on the rise and there is a strong likelihood that it would get a lot worse before it gets any better.

This information comes from SurfShark which has been taking note of social media censorship over the last seven years. This research involved an analysis on the state of internet access and social media in all of the 193 countries that are recognized by the UN, and one thing to note is that this often involves preventing certain information from being spread on social media apart from restricting user access to said social media sites in the first place so this is quite a diverse issue.

The worst offenders when it comes to social media censorship are generally countries that are in Asia and Africa. These countries are somewhat more likely to have authoritarian rulers and dictatorial governmental regimes. Such forms of government give the state leeway to do whatever it would like to do in order to provide or take away internet access as they see fit. Hence, since there are no legal blocks that can prevent governments from censoring social media and blocking access to sites, they often move forward with it without any obstacles.

Another really concerning thing that this data reveals is that there is at least some kind of social media blocking that is occurring in around a third of the countries that exist at present. These blockages often center around things like elections and any type of political upheaval, and there are 71 countries that are either currently blocking some form of social media access or alternatively have done so at some point in the past. Most of these countries are in Asia and Africa, with South America also having a large number of them.

If we were to take a closer look at how these things work, it can be discovered that the vast majority of African countries do not allow unrestricted social media access to their citizens. Sometimes this can be relatively innocuous such as in the case such as Algeria blocking social media access during exam season so that students can focus on their studies. In other cases it can be more serious such as Nigeria completing banning Twitter when the new government came into power.

Asia is also a pretty bad offender in this regard. Perhaps the worst country in the world for social media use is actually China due to the reason that this country has blocked access to virtually all foreign social media platforms. Another example of terrible internet rights violations occurred in India, where the government completely blocked all forms of internet access in the disputed territory of Jammu and Kashmir after passing a controversial new law that suspended this territorys disputed status which caused widespread protests among the residents of that locale.

The fact that so many governments are adamant about banning social media is a strong indication of how powerful a tool it can be. It allows for the rapid dissemination of all kinds of information, and most governments that rely on the iron fist to maintain power would obviously not be all that happy about that and would want to restrict it whenever they can.

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Social Media Censorship is Getting Worse According to This Study - Digital Information World

Ted Nugent has railed against large social-media companies that block users from their platforms.

The outspoken conservative rocker is an ardent supporter of former U.S. president Donald Trump who was famously suspended from his social accounts in January 2021 over public safety concerns in the wake of the Capitol riot.

During his YouTube livestream on Thursday (January 20), Nugent once again upped his unsubstantiated accusations that tech companies are censoring his speech as Facebook and other tech companies have attempted to limit coronavirus vaccine misinformation.

"Boy, does Big Tech crush the First Amendment, like some kind of devil grease gangbangers," Nugent said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET).

"Hey, Big Tech fact checkers, you're lying scum. And they all have to put up a COVID alert misinformation. No, no, no everything from Big Tech and the media and the government, that's the misinformation.

"When I share [information from physician group] Frontline Doctors and epidemiologists and virologists, experts, lifetime dedicated, professional healthcare specialists, doctors and scientists, when I express their findings, that's not misinformation; that's pertinent information," he continued.

"Big Tech, the media and the government, academia and Hollywood, when they identify stuff coming out of me 'cause I don't have any medical or science hunches; I'm cocky but I'm not that stupid. So I go to the professional healthcare, dedicated Frontline Doctors, and I share truth, logic and medical common sense. And when they identify it as misinformation, that's the misinformation. Okay? So let's be forewarned."

Addressing the fact that he is still able to share his views on most of the major social media networks like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and even YouTube, Ted said: "I can't believe they haven't kicked me off yet. Twitter has kicked off Shemane [Nugent, Ted's wife]. She's like Mother Teresa, Joan Of Arc. She's the greatest, sweetest, harmless woman that ever walked the earth, and she's kicked off Twitter because she said something positive about Donald Trump inconsequential; just a compliment.

"By the way, you know the First Amendment? That was not given to us by the government," Ted added. "That didn't start when they wrote it in the Constitution. Tell me you know that when they wrote down self-evident truth in the Constitution and the Bill Of Rights that those rights and those freedoms didn't begin there; they already existed. We didn't need a man to put it to paper. We got 'em from God, from the Creator. We were born with all those freedoms, all those self-evident-truth rights. We just wrote it in the documents in case we experience some prick like King George Joe Biden who's gonna try to play tyrannical emperor kingpunk. We just want it on paper just to reference those punks that would try to pry it from our soul. But we know we have it when we're born, whether it's on paper or not."

Last May, Nugent said that he beat COVID-19 by following "intelligent, professionally guided care from the Frontline Doctors," referring to the aforementioned group of doctors who made a video in July 2020 calling for the use of hydroxychloroquine to battle the novel coronavirus, despite warnings from public health experts.

In the above-mentioned video, a group of people wearing white lab coats calling themselves "America's Frontline Doctors" staged a press conference in front of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C. and made a number of dubious claims, including that "you don't need masks" to prevent spread of the coronavirus, and that studies showing hydroxychloroquine is ineffective for the treatment of COVID-19 are "fake science" sponsored by "fake pharma companies." According to Politifact, many of the doctors' claims contradicted recommendations from public health organizations and experts like Dr. Anthony Fauci. The video quickly went viral on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube before it was taken down for promoting misinformation.

Last month, Nugent told the Des Moines, Iowa radio station Lazer 103.3 that he beat COVID-19 by "listen[ing] to what the government told me to do and [doing] just the opposite. And whatever the government told me not to do, that's exactly what I did do, and I was cured in about two days."

Nugent, an outspoken conspiracy theorist who has refused to take the vaccine, also once again falsely claimed that public health measures taken during the COVID-19 pandemic violate the Nuremberg code, a set of medical experimentation guidelines set after World War Two, as the vaccine is experimental.

In April, Nugent talked about the darkest days of his battle with COVID-19, saying that he had "never been so scared" in his entire life. The 73-year-old pro-gun activist, who had previously claimed the virus was "not a real pandemic," said: "It was really scary. I didn't think I was gonna make it. I literally couldn't function for about 20 hours, and then they came and they rescued me The six-foot-two, 225-pound headache [this time] was like nothing I have ever experienced. I mean, from my tip of my toes to the top of my hair, I literally was dizzy and weak and struggled to get up to go to the bathroom. And I would lay in the bathtub a couple of times a day with the water as hot as I could take it just to divert."

In the past, Nugent had referred to the virus as a "leftist scam to destroy" Trump. He had also repeated a narrative pushed by conservative media and disputed by health experts that suggests the official death count from the coronavirus is inflated.

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TED NUGENT Rails Against Big Tech Censorship: 'I Can't Believe They Haven't Kicked Me Off Yet' - BLABBERMOUTH.NET