Facebook’s Secret Rule Book

Posted on 30 December 2018 by eehines

Facebook has written a massive, byzantine, and secret document of rules packed with spreadsheets and power point slides to help it censor the news posted tackle misinformation posted to its facility.

Even the New York Times gets it, at least to an extent.

The closely held rules are extensive, and they make the company a far more powerful arbiter of global speech than has been publicly recognized or acknowledged by the company itself[.]

It’s also internally inconsistent.

The [NYT] discovered a range of gaps, biases and outright errors—including instances where Facebook allowed extremism to spread in some counties while censoring mainstream speech in others.

This is a preview of Facebook’s Secret Rule Book. Read the full post (492 words, estimated 1:58 mins reading time)

What We Can Look Forward To

Posted on 29 December 2018 by eehines

Former Acting ICE Director Tom Homan called out California’s sanctuary laws after the murder of a Newman police officer by a suspect who is in the US illegally.

That murdered cop, by the way, was himself an immigrant—a legal one from Fiji.

I’ve mentioned before that House Speaker-to-Be Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY) refuse at all to negotiate.

This is a preview of What We Can Look Forward To. Read the full post (401 words, estimated 1:36 mins reading time)

Child Molestation and Bankruptcy Escapes

Posted on 28 December 2018 by eehines

Ironically, it’s the Catholic Church that has invented this ruse.

The Archdiocese of Portland was the first to do it. Three months later the Roman Catholic Diocese in Tucson, AZ, followed suit and three months after that the diocese in Spokane, WA, did it, too.
They all filed for bankruptcy and since then more than 15 other Catholic dioceses and religious orders have filed for bankruptcy to seek protection from lawsuits by sexual-assault victims, resulting in about 4,000 claims seeking compensation for past wrongdoing. This year, three more Catholic dioceses announced intentions to file.

This is a preview of Child Molestation and Bankruptcy Escapes. Read the full post (549 words, estimated 2:12 mins reading time)

The Party of Expansionist, Acquisitive Government

Posted on 28 December 2018 by eehines

That’s what we can see made plain in the incoming Congress’ House of Representatives. Congresswoman Bonnie Watson Coleman (D, NJ) had this on her Progressive-Democratic Party’s plans:

There are dozens of measures…that have been languishing with Republicans at the helm for years, and I expect to see many of them finally come to the floor under Democratic leadership[.]

Plans like rolling back the just enacted tax cuts and preventing the individual income tax cuts from becoming permanent. Because the Progressive-Democrats know more about how to spend our money than we do.

This is a preview of The Party of Expansionist, Acquisitive Government. Read the full post (323 words, estimated 1:18 mins reading time)

Foolish Misunderstanding

Posted on 21 December 2018 by eehines

CNN‘s Fareed Zakaria is dismayed with our Constitution and the concept of a republican democracy.

[T]he Constitutional concept of equal representation in the U.S. Senate [is] a “structural problem.”

And

…”new dividing line in Western politics,” which [Zakaria] describes is the “less-educated rural populations” he calls “Outsiders” who “feel ignored or looked down upon” and “feel deep resentment towards metropolitan elites.”

And

…30% of America is now electing 70% of the Senate. All those states with—you think of Wyoming. It has roughly a million people. It has two senators. California with 70 million people has two senators as well. So we have a kind of structural problem here where the land is being overrepresented. The people are being underrepresented. So both sides feel deeply wronged.

This is a preview of Foolish Misunderstanding. Read the full post (307 words, estimated 1:14 mins reading time)

What He Said

Posted on 18 December 2018 by eehines

Alphabet’s Google CEO, Sundar Pichai, testified before the House Judiciary Committee last Tuesday, and he declined to justify his company’s decision to use the Southern Poverty Law Center as what the company calls a “trusted flagger,” a facility whereby these Trusted Ones can identify speech of which they personally disapprove as hate speech and thereby have it censored from Google’s products. Pichai also was unable to explain why Google predominantly censored Conservative speech. This prompted Congressman Louie Gohmert (R, TX) to take official notice of Pichai’s own bias.

This is a preview of What He Said. Read the full post (206 words, estimated 49 secs reading time)

Not Throwing a Party is Exclusionary

Posted on 17 December 2018 by eehines

According to Howard Kurtz, self-styled news media “critic,” not having a party for members of the NLMSM is exclusionary. President Donald Trump has decided not to throw a White House holiday party for the media this year.

the president’s decision to exclude the media establishment, at least for this year.

There it is, right from the jump. Not having a big, expensive party is exclusionary. Right up there with the actual bigotry of excluding blacks, or women, or… from access to a government facility or public business.

It gets really petty, too: not having this party is particularly terrible, Kurtz says.

This is a preview of Not Throwing a Party is Exclusionary. Read the full post (340 words, estimated 1:22 mins reading time)

Pre-Determined Outcome

Posted on 15 December 2018 by eehines

New York’s Attorney-Elect Letitia James says she’s made her decision about the guilt of a man, a family, and a business, and now he’s going to collect the information needed to support her decision.

We will use every area of the law to investigate President Trump and his business transactions and that of his family as well.
We want to investigate anyone in his orbit who has, in fact, violated the law[.]

She’s already determined, prior to any investigation whatsoever, that they’re guilty of having violated one or more [unnamed] laws.

This is a preview of Pre-Determined Outcome. Read the full post (218 words, estimated 52 secs reading time)

Faith in the PRC

Posted on 14 December 2018 by eehines

The People’s Republic of China is broadening the reach of its religion.

Officials have threatened to close the Early Rain Covenant Church in the central city of Chengdu by the end of the year in keeping with new religious-management regulations, according to several congregants who said they had been waiting for the net to fall. In coordinated raids starting Sunday night, police detained Pastor Wang Yi and more than 100 of the church’s 500 members, said Li Yingqiang, a church leader.

This is a preview of Faith in the PRC. Read the full post (190 words, estimated 46 secs reading time)

Brexit Botch

Posted on 11 December 2018 by eehines

British Prime Minister Theresa May yesterday pulled today’s planned Parliament vote on her Brexit deal with Brussels when it became clear that not even her fellow Tories supported the deal in sufficient numbers to pass. What’s more, she’s not suggested a new date for the vote, even though something is required to be presented to Parliament by 21 Jan 2019.

The deal as it stands is a terrible one, worse IMNSHO than a plain, unadorned breakout from the European Union. It represented May’s meek submission to Brussels on nearly every one of their demands—including functional retention of EU immigration “rights” and EU court rulings within what used to be sovereign Great Britain for several years after the British nominal departure.

This is a preview of Brexit Botch. Read the full post (292 words, estimated 1:10 mins reading time)

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