Tag Archives: responsibilities

Abuse and Disinformation

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Facebook is claiming to be adding a new tool for fighting these on its platform.

The Ad Archive API will allow researchers, journalists, publishers, and watchdog groups to efficiently analyze and search for ads to determine if anything untoward is happening.

Who, though, are going to be authorized access to the databases—which researchers, journalists, publishers, and watchdog groups, and what selection criteria will be used?  We’ve already seen how Facebook, under the guise of identifying what it’s pleased to call fake news, has selected “fact checkers” almost exclusively from the Left (a few tokens from the right have been invited)—Associated Press, Snopes.com, ABC News, and Politifact—as a mechanism for making the identification and then deleting the allegedly fake material.

We’ve also seen how, using this new capacity, Facebook censors and deletes Conservative posts and suspends Conservative accounts, and on being caught claiming “mistake” and undoing the deeds.  And continuing to make those “mistakes” apace.

Given Facebook‘s history of this, on what basis would we think this latest move has value?

“Nothing More American”

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Texas Senate Progressive-Democratic Party candidate Beto O’Rourke has said, in response to a question about NFL players kneeling during our national anthem

I can think of nothing more American than to peacefully stand up, or take a knee for your rights anytime, anywhere, any place.

It’s the American thing to do to kneel and disparage our national anthem, to deprecate our flag, to insult generations of veterans who have fought, been maimed, and been killed for the right of folks like this…candidate…and those NFL personages to insult of the symbol and defenders of that right.

Right.

Remember the Progressive-Democrat’s version of respect and of patriotism this fall.

Editorial Decisions

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Gerald Seib made one typical of the NLMSM in his Monday op-ed.  He opened his piece with this, and he went on from there.

Let’s imagine for a moment a parallel universe in which President Trump last week didn’t call a onetime top female aide a “dog….”

…

In that parallel universe, which of these other stories might have gotten more attention?

  • A Commerce Department report on booming sales in grocery stores, restaurants and department stores
  • The largest one-day rise in the stock market in four months
  • The approval by Mr Trump’s own Food and Drug Administration of a lifesaving generic version of the EpiPen injector device for allergic reactions
  • The resumption of trade talks with Chinese officials who increasingly appear shaken by the Trump administration’s tough actions.

Probably, all of them would have gotten more attention.

Let’s understand one thing very clearly. It’s entirely Seib’s editorial choice and that of his fellow journalists to talk about side issues instead of serious ones, matters like those in his list above that he’s confessed to freely ignoring in favor of tabloid claptrap. Blaming these editorial decisions on the man the NLMSM is so anxious to disparage is an illustration of the general dishonesty of the NLMSM.

Criticize or praise his policies to a journalist’s heart’s content—and there’s much to critique from both sides of his policies—that’s an op-ed journalist’s job.  Deciding to ignore those policies is not.

Oh, and one more thing.  For good or ill, Trump calls everyone “dog.” Seib and his fellow journalists are the only ones making a big deal about a particular person’s gender. His and their rank sexism stinks.

Drinking Coolaid

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The NLMSM has done it.  In deep drafts.  And, no, I’m not writing about the recent collusion among NLMSM outlets one Sunday to write coordinated “opinion” anti-Trump pieces.

No, it’s even more blatant than that.  Here is an example of how deeply the NLMSM has drunk of ex-Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s (D) coolaid that half of Americans are irredeemably deplorable racist, misogynistic, homophobes and ex-President Barack Obama’s (D) coolaid that we’re all just a bunch of bitter Bible-clinging gun-toters in flyover country.

MSNBC political analyst John Heilemann had this to say about those not on the Left and so too ignorant to agree with him:

I would like a pollster to test this question: how many people in the Republican Party think that it would be OK for Donald Trump to dissolve their own grandparents?

I’m virtually certain that if it was a Donald Trump–related question, you’ll get like 10% that would be like “Donald Trump has the power to do whatever he wants, including kill my parents.”

Heilemann claimed he was being hyperbolic to make a point about Trump loyalists, but you get the idea.

Distractions

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Mark Warner (D, VA), Ranking Member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has objected to President Donald Trump’s revoking ex-CIA Director John Brennan’s security clearance.

This might be a convenient way to distract attention, say from a damaging news story or two. But politicizing the way we guard our nation’s secrets just to punish the President’s critics is a dangerous precedent.

This is neither politicization nor punishment, but a safeguard of our nation’s secrets.  No one, regardless of rank, once they leave government service should have a security clearance.  They neither have a need to know nor a need for access, the two Critical Items—both of which must be present, not just one of them—for granting clearances.  Trump’s only error here is in not ordering the revocation for all persons who have left government service.

No, what’s happening is that Progressive-Democrats like Warner are using this manufactured kerfuffle over Brennan’s security clearance revocation to distract from the fact that their Party has no message whatsoever other than that America is not, and never has, been great and never will be until there’s free stuff for everyone, paid for by taxing the rich, taxing the energy engine of our economy, cutting back our ability to defend ourselves, and on and on.