A Contributing Factor To The Misinformed Electorate

NPR did some snooping and tracked down one of prime creators of fake news web sites, Jestin Coler. Coler owns a company appropriately named Disinfomedia.

"The whole idea from the start was to build a site that could kind of infiltrate the echo chambers of the alt-right, publish blatantly or fictional stories and then be able to publicly denounce those stories and point out the fact that they were fiction," Coler says. 

He was amazed at how quickly fake news could spread and how easily people believe it.

One site, nationalreport.com, is still active. I've seen it before and you don't have to look at it for more than two seconds before realizing it's obviously fake.

During the run-up to the presidential election, fake news really took off. "It was just anybody with a blog can get on there and find a big, huge Facebook group of kind of rabid Trump supporters just waiting to eat up this red meat that they're about to get served," Coler says. "It caused an explosion in the number of sites. I mean, my gosh, the number of just fake accounts on Facebook exploded during the Trump election." 

I noticed. Hence I stopped following a bunch of people on Facebook who kept parroting this crap. On the bright side, my news feed doesn't get me riled up any more.

Coler says his writers have tried to write fake news for liberals — but they just never take the bait.

There's little comfort in knowing that many people didn't fall for the fake crap when you consider how many did.

Lazy Or Irresponsible Reporting

I rarely watch television news but I catch snippets here and there in public places. The coverage of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge takeover by an armed militia is obviously a hot infotainment item. Regarding the sentences of Steven and Dwight Hammond I keep hearing something along the lines of "the judge decided they didn't spend enough time in prison." This is a complete misrepresentation that does nothing more than serve as more fodder for the anti-government movement.

The Hammonds were convicted of violating 18 US Code Section 844(f)(1), which states.

Whoever maliciously damages or destroys, or attempts to damage or destroy, by means of fire or an explosive, any building, vehicle, or other personal or real property in whole or in part owned or possessed by, or leased to, the United States, or any department or agency thereof, or any institution or organization receiving Federal financial assistance, shall be imprisoned for not less than 5 years and not more than 20 years, fined under this title, or both.

The District Court judge decided five years imprisonment was cruel and unusual punishment and gave them much shorter sentences. The government appealed and the Ninth Circuit held that the judge could not violate the statute and give a shorter sentence. They found for the government and instructed the District Court judge to give the sentence as required by the statute.

So a judge didn't decide the Hammonds didn't spend enough time in prison. A judge decided not to apply the mandatory minimum sentence as required by law. A panel of judges determined he cannot do that and, regardless of the District Court judge's concerns about cruel and unusual punishment as addressed by the 8th Amendment, cited numerous cases where the Supreme Court upheld similar and harsher sentences for what would appear, at face value, to not be violations that warranted such punishment.

And Congress decided five years of imprisonment was the minimum sentence.

Oh, And Screw The Fish

A couple weeks ago, Sue Lani Madsen wrote a column in the Spokesman Review in which she thought cyclists would be much safer if they wore bright green.

Today, as if in the "both sides do it" spirit that now permeates the media, her column takes on vehicle drivers.

According to the Washington State Department of Health, “… motor vehicle crashes are the second leading cause of unintentional injury death (after poisonings), and the leading cause of major trauma. Motor vehicle injuries are largely preventable and are mainly due to human behavior rather than poor road design, vehicle issues, or weather.”

She then continues by ranting about specific human behaviors and kind of finishes with this.

Painted bike lanes don’t protect bicyclists, painted crosswalks don’t protect pedestrians, double yellow lines don’t protect drivers. A driver has the responsibility to drive according to road conditions. It doesn’t matter if poor conditions are a result of road design, icy weather or heavy traffic. It doesn’t matter if the traffic is on two wheels, four wheels or on foot. The root of the problem is human behavior.

I'm guessing she would like an improvement in human behavior because all she does essentially is complain about it.

Which is as effective as this.

Then she closes with something that has nothing to do with poor driving behavior.

But those petitioning for highway safety improvements on U.S. 195 and Route 26 are not wrong to want better roads. Upgrades to support increasing traffic already are planned, although funding is two to ten years out. State Sen. Mark Schoesler, R-Ritzville, has suggested changing budget priorities. He has requested that $113 million budgeted for fish passage projects be shifted to upgrading highway safety sooner rather than later. The fish can wait.

It must be nice to have a gig where you get paid to complain. The Spokesman Review sets a low bar for printing this tripe.

I Live This All The Time

He's referring to the Dunning-Kruger effect. When you’re incompetent, the skills you need to produce a right answer are exactly the skills you need to recognize what a right answer is. In logical reasoning, in parenting, in management, problem solving, the skills you use to produce the right answer are exactly the same skills you use to evaluate the answer.

At work I'm in charge if IT and I'm the most cautious and conservative person when it comes to technology I'm not familiar with. I think that bothers some people but I can live with it. I try to be smart enough to know when I'm not smart enough to know.

Oh, and I love the Fox News viewer zinger.

I Think I'll Go Outside

I just turned on the TV and caught a sports commentator giving some passing stats on the San Diego Chargers' quarterback who's playing at the moment.

"Last week he was 82%. Today he is 10 of 12."

Hmmm, 10/12 = 83.3%.

Wow, thank you for being so informative and insightful, mister sports commentator.

Another Reason To Rue The State Of The Media Today

Last year, the US Air Force required their oath of enlistment to include the words "so help me God" regardless of the airman's religious affiliation or lack thereof, based on their interpretation of United State Code 10. why did that start last year? I have no idea. It was always optional during the time I was in from 1975-1998.

Recently an airman crossed out those words and refused to say them. Consequently, the Air Force told him he could not reenlist unless he included those words. Legal representation was obtained, the issue was sent up the channel, and everyone wondered why the US Air Force, alone among the military services, was violating the US Constitution by requiring airmen to swear their oath before "God", presumably the Christian god. Today the Air Force corrected their policy.

KXLY News decided to report this by posting this on their Facebook page:

"SOUND OFF!" they say.

As I just showed in the paragraphs above, a couple of rudimentary searches would find the facts in this case. But rather than inform the public, KXLY sensationalizes instead. What a waste.

Seeing Is Believing

Yesterday's sports news and the Interwebs were burning hot with titillation as the video showing Ray Price one-punching his wife into a loss of consciousness played on an infinite loop. Condemnation rightfully rained down and the NFL and the Baltimore Ravens took harsher actions claiming that seeing what Price did for the first time made all the difference.

And yet all all this time they knew what he did.

And It Wasn't Even A Slow News Day

Today someone took a photo of a cyclist in the road, sent it to KHQ News, and asked if what the cyclist was doing was legal. KHQ posted the photo on their Facebook page, said that the cyclist was legal, and then asked, "But do you think it should be?"

And so began the "debate". There was one noteworthy comment telling KHQ they should put a Go Pro on a reporter and have them try bike commuting for a while. 

Proving George Carlin Right

In one of his later routines, the late George Carlin talked about who is really in charge of our country. Bad language alert!

Because the owners of this country don't want that. I'm talking about the real owners, now. The real owners, the big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions. Forget the politicians, they're an irrelevancy. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don't. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They've long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the statehouses, the city halls. They've got the judges in their back pockets. And they own all the big media companies, so that they control just about all of the news and information you hear. They've got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying,­ lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want; they want more for themselves and less for everybody else. 

But I'll tell you what they don't want. They don't want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don't want well-informed, well-educated people capable of critical thinking. They're not interested in that. That doesn't help them. That's against their interests. They don't want people who are smart enough to sit around the kitchen table and figure out how badly they're getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago.

Proving Carlin's point, The Heartland Institute, a conservative think tank that helped the Philip Morris tobacco company question the risks associated with second hand smoke and now is heavily funded by oil and gas companies and promotes studies and conferences that dispute man-made climate change, changed George Carlin's words just a bit and posted them with a photo on their Facebook page.

Do you see what is different? "Governments" replaced "They", which changes the entire meaning. The "they" that George Carlin referenced is the owners. The big wealthy business interests. They are the ones who don't want well-informed, well educated people capable of critical thought.

And if you did your homework you'd find that in this case, George Carlin was right.

Beautiful Takedown

I apologize for the autoplay.

Failed Journalism

I saw this news report floating around the Facebook world. It shows some people at a small business in Pittsburgh getting the news of their health care costs rising because of the Affordable Health Care Act. You'll notice the news station had their cameras set up for the meeting so they had to be invited there. Charles Moore is identified as the broker who handles the company's health insurance.

Moore hands out papers to each individual.

What I have here is the benefits sheet from last year. What you were on in 2013. Here is the new plan we had to switch to that takes into account the Obamacare regulations.

The (so called) news report goes on to cover all the details in which each person's coverage is much higher than before.



What puzzled me was that each person was presented with only one option when in reality they should have several to choose from. Plus, while Pennsylvania has a private market, people in that state also have the option of using the federal market, which they need to use if they are eligible for federal tax subsidies. Nothing about that is mentioned.

Just as the Bette from Spokane story fell apart under scrutiny, this one does as well. It turns out that Charles Moore has very public anti-Obama leanings and it appears he set this up just to make the Affordable Health Care Act look bad. The employees at this small business (see the recent post from Pete Smith and expand the comments) were, at best misled, by Mr Moore, if not used by him.

And WTAE Channel 4 news could have had a far different news report if they had done just a little homework.

God Those Were Happy Times, Weren't They?

Phil Robertson's remarks about homosexuality are nothing compared to what he said and nobody is talking about.

“I never, with my eyes, saw the mistreatment of any black person. Not once. Where we lived was all farmers. The blacks worked for the farmers. I hoed cotton with them. I’m with the blacks, because we’re white trash. We’re going across the field.... They’re singing and happy. I never heard one of them, one black person, say, ‘I tell you what: These doggone white people’—not a word!... Pre-entitlement, pre-welfare, you say: Were they happy? They were godly; they were happy; no one was singing the blues.” 

Phil must have lived someplace never where news of the outside world never pierced the protective shell surrounding the community he lived in. The Jim Crow laws, lynchings, and murders suffered by his dark-skinned fellow American citizens in the 50's and 60's had no effect on the godly, happy black people who were not singing the blues during that time.

Emmett Till and many others would not concur.

I Guess It's Funny

There's an absolutely bogus article on Runner's World about a fourteen-month-old finishing a marathon. There were three diaper changes, a nap, and she finished in 9 hours and 24 minutes. Barefoot. And she wants to start her own line of gluten-free energy bars.

Truly believable photoshop effort.

There is a mention of actual young runners so apparently it's intended to be an over-the-top look at young distance runners. (Insert forced laughter here.)

Current Events

Between work at work and work at home I've been slammed lately so I haven't been bringing up much besides cyclocross. Now that I've had a breather, there are a couple of subjects I've been wondering about.

60 Minutes used to be well respected for its reporting on CBS. Heck, it was so good I watched it when I was a kid. I loved watching Mike Wallace figuratively rip into people. But I don't watch it much any more. Most television news leans more towards entertainment. The so-called news today consists of lots of teasers, sensationalism, and over-dramatization. It's something I blame on the consolidation of the media that taken place over the last couple of decades. Anyway, 60 Minutes recently exposed just how far off the journalism track their train has gone with their report on the attack in Benghazi that resulted in the deaths of four Americans, one of whom was the ambassador to Libya. The story was based on a book written by a security contractor, Dylan Davies, whose official statements about the attack contradict everything he wrote in the book. Laura Logan has since sort-of-apologized for the program's "mistake." In the meantime, the book, which was published by a CBS subsidiary, Threshold Editions, is yanking the book back. Maybe if they listed it as fiction.

What's with this special session Governor Inslee called to pass a $10 billion transportation package that had no chance of being passed but was really all about more tax breaks for Boeing so they'd build the 777X in Washington? In 2003, Washington State gave Boeing a $3.2 billion, 20-year tax break for building the 787 here. Six years later, Boeing built another 787 manufacturing plant in South Carolina thanks to an incentive package offered by that state. So when does the tax break war end and how will that benefit the state that wins when Boeing pays little or nothing in taxes, less in salaries, and profits even more immensely than it is already? Our state legislators fell all over themselves to pass this enticement using the justification of keeping the jobs here. In the meantime, the machinists union, the people who hold those jobs, are being asked to approve an eight-year contract that replaces the traditional pension with a defined-contribution retirement plan, increases health care premiums and co-pays, and restructures the wage scale so it takes 16 years instead of 6 to reach the top. Boeing will give everyone a $10,000 signing bonus if the union accepts and says they will move the jobs elsewhere if they don't. So what we have is the government looking out for the corporation and the workers looking out for themselves. In the long run the state and the workers get screwed and Boeing gets bank.

Eight days ago, Christian historian David Barton, who now is no longer considering running against Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) next year, explained that weather disasters were man-made. But it's not because of climate change. It's because we voted in politicians who supported abortion rights. According to Barton we're all suffering because we've lost God's protection over our environment. That certainly explains why the Philippines, a predominantly Catholic country where abortion is illegal, just got slammed by the strongest typhoon ever recorded.

But You Said...

The news cycle has moved on, but I have an observation about the story where Senator Dick Durbin alleged that an unnamed Republican House leader told the president, “I cannot even stand to look at you,” during the government shutdown negotiations back on October 10th.

Senator Harry Reid, apparently informed by a couple of other people, said it was Representative Pete Session (R-TX). Rep. Sessions issued a puzzling statement.

“I will not admit to saying anything because it would not be true. If they taped our conversations in there, and private conversations were taped, they should have advised us of that, and I’m disappointed that the White House would try and mislead people otherwise."

Here is what the White House said.

“While the quote attributed to a Republican lawmaker in the House GOP meeting with the president is not accurate, there was a miscommunication when the White House read out that meeting to Senate Democrats, and we regret the misunderstanding."

I don't understand how people are being misled. Also, everyone at the meeting is denying it happened.

What I find interesting is that Sessions mentions the possible recording of private conversations. Why would you mention the recording of private conversations unless you were concerned that what you said in private may become public?

Must be time to move along to more serious issues for Congress not to deal with.

Ignoring White Privilege

In today's Spokesman Review we have an op-ed from Kathleen Parker in which she shows that in this respect she's out of touch with the real world.

These are all true statements if we identify ourselves and each other only by the color of our skin, which increasingly seems to be the case – including our own president.  

Barack Obama helped lead the way when he identified himself with Trayvon Martin, shot by George Zimmerman in the neighborhood-watch catastrophe with which all are familiar. Stepping out from his usual duties of drawing meaningless red lines in the Syrian sand, the president splashed red paint across the American landscape:  

“If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.”  

In so saying, he essentially gave permission for all to identify themselves by race with the victim or the accused. How sad as we approach the 50th anniversary of the march Martin Luther King Jr. led on Washington that even the president resorts to judging not by the content of one’s character but by the color of his skin – the antithesis of the great dream King articulated with those words.

Obama went even further after the Zimmerman verdict, expressing his self-identification not as leader of a racially diverse nation – or as the son of a white mother – but as a black man who remembers women clutching their purses tighter when he entered an elevator and being followed in department stores. All because he was black?

What Ms. Parker doesn't understand is that President Obama wasn't giving permission for people to identify themselves by race. He was describing what it's like to be black in America, explained even better by LeVar Burton when he appeared on CNN. It's something I've not only witnessed my entire life but shamefully contributed to in my younger years.

Ms Parker's op-ed is appropriately entitled "Sad When Color Outweighs Character". But she gets it all wrong because she's looking at it from a white privileged perspective where her character is never automatically, unfairly, and disparagingly determined by her skin color.

A Bastion Of Freedom And Democracy?

When you kill civilians in person it's a war crime, as it should be.

When you kill civilians with an unmanned aerial vehicle it's...um...regrettable?

And just as it does with surveillance and monitoring of Americans, Congress aids and abets even when simply doing nothing.

A Masquerade

Mask of Sanity
by quasilucid

The College Republican National Committee surveyed some young Obama voters earlier this year and came up with a report. It's pretty interesting. What strikes me most about it is this report does not address the policies and ideology purity that paint the Republican Party as intolerant, stupid, close minded, etc. Instead it essentially recommends marketing strategies for attracting young voters. In other words, don't change anything except appearances. Sounds like a winning strategy. 

Some excerpts:

It is not that young voters are enamored of the Democratic Party. They simply dislike the Republican Party more. In the focus group research conducted in January 2013, the young “winnable” Obama voters were asked to say what words came to mind when they heard “Republican Party.” The responses were brutal: closed-minded, racist, rigid, old-fashioned.  

When all of Congress has an approval rating barely hovering above a single digit, the thought that one party is disliked more than another carries little weight. Unless, of course, your plan is to make voters dislike the other party more only for the self-serving reason of being in power.  

When someone purchases a product, in some ways they are buying into the value system espoused by the brand. With a list of attributes like that, who would want to buy the product the GOP is selling?  

Yes, but this report does not address changing the product.  

Respondents were given a long list of positive options, including some words that conventional wisdom would suggest are highly important to this generation: tolerant, cool, creative, unique. Yet the results did not suggest this is a generation that wants to be seen as cool, or adventurous, or creative. 

Instead, they want to be thought of as smart. 

 

Asked which words least described the GOP, respondents gravitated toward “open-minded” (35%), “tolerant” (25%), “caring” (22%), and “cooperative” (21%). Theoretically, the good news in all of this is that while the Republican Party’s negative brand is being driven heavily by a perceived lack of open-mindedness and caring, the other brand attributes that matter to young people – intelligence, a strong work-ethic, and competence – are not out of reach and are certainly up for grabs. Respondents were also asked what they thought of the Democratic Party. Just as the Republican Party loses on the “open-minded” attribute, the Democrats win it with 33% of respondents saying the word best describes the Democratic Party. This is followed by “tolerant” at 26%. Of note, 14% of young voters say they think of the Democratic Party as “intelligent” – the same proportion that see the Republican Party that way. 
... 
This doesn’t just mean putting up a Facebook page and calling it a day. This means having a campaign website that is seamlessly accessed from a mobile device, that encourages supporters to text in their support, that is optimized to get a message across to the girl at the gym listening to Pandora on her headphones and the guy watching clips of last night’s Daily Show on his iPad. It means really studying the shows that young people are watching and occasionally buying some TV time there, or at least buying advertising time on Hulu and other streaming video sources. Most importantly, it means creating online content that is interesting, funny, or positive, and that makes someone want to share it with their friends because it makes them seem interesting and funny. As young voters increasingly distrust campaign advertising, finding ways to get supporters to put their “seal of approval” on a video or post by sharing and retweeting is essential to giving your message the credibility that will let you change minds.  

Coming soon to an online site near you. Republican Party members "As Seen On Fox". They're smart. They're intelligent. They're brainy. They're brilliant. They are sheer genius. So vote for them today before their Voter ID laws prevent you from doing so.

*** Update

Yet across all six groups, when the topic turned to future leaders of the parties, the GOP was clearly in a stronger position. Asked to name up-and-coming Republican stars, these young Obama voters could point to a number of examples. Marco Rubio, Chris Christie, Paul Ryan, Bobby Jindal, and Rand Paul were all mentioned. 

Sterling examples of the Republican Party.

Modern Day Snake Oil

New York City Mayor Bloomberg thinks we need to change our interpretation of the Constitution.

“The people who are worried about privacy have a legitimate worry,” Mr. Bloomberg said during a press conference in Midtown. “But we live in a complex word where you’re going to have to have a level of security greater than you did back in the olden days, if you will. And our laws and our interpretation of the Constitution, I think, have to change.”
...
“It really says something bad about us that we have to do it. But our obligation first and foremost is to keep our kids safe in the schools; first and foremost, to keep you safe if you go to a sporting event; first and foremost is to keep you safe if you walk down the streets or go into our parks,” he said. “We cannot let the terrorists put us in a situation where we can’t do those things. And the ways to do that is to provide what we think is an appropriate level of protection.”

So called reinterpretations--considered by many as violations--of the Constitution have been going on for quite some time now. Enhanced interrogation, indefinite detention, warrantless surveillance, and ridiculous security theater at airports, all in the name of fighting terrorism and keeping us safe.

There is no keeping us 100% safe. Efforts made in that direction are a salve to soothe fears heightened by the speed and distance bad news travels these days. Twitter feeds and breaking news constantly interrupt us: "Have you heard? Have you heard? Have you heard?" Compounding our fears even more is the repetition, the echo chamber known as the media. Look at the flash, the smoke, and the carnage. Look again. And again. Have you seen the carnage? And they continue to show it until the next one happens. Have you heard? Have you seen?

But we don't concern ourselves with that because fear is foremost in our mind pushing rational thought aside. Something bad happened there. Could it happen here? Stay tuned. Hence the increased security planned for Bloomsday--just to be safe.

"Just to be safe," we say, rubbing the liniment on and hoping nobody asks, "Does this shit really work?"

Be Different--As If You Have A Choice--At Your Own Peril

A compelling story of America's post 9-11 state of mind and the vindictiveness of Fox News from the New Yorker.

A twenty-year-old man who had been watching the Boston Marathon had his body torn into by the force of a bomb. He wasn’t alone; a hundred and seventy-six people were injured and three were killed. But he was the only one who, while in the hospital being treated for his wounds, had his apartment searched in “a startling show of force,” as his fellow-tenants described it to the Boston Herald, with a “phalanx” of officers and agents and two K9 units.
...
What made them suspect him? He was running—so was everyone. The police reportedly thought he smelled like explosives; his wounds might have suggested why. He said something about thinking there would be a second bomb—as there was, and often is, to target responders. If that was the reason he gave for running, it was a sensible one. He asked if anyone was dead—a question people were screaming. And he was from Saudi Arabia, which is around where the logic stops.