I’m running a but late today as I had a lot of record keeping to catch up. The air is still stagnant and upsetting my COPD, but not badly.
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 5:31 (average 12:14). To do it, click here.
Religious Ecstasy:
Would someone please make sure I’m conscious. This is so unbelievable that I think someone spiked my coffee with wacky tobackey.
Short Takes:
From YouTube (Trae Crowder Channel): Liberal Redneck – To Hell with Roy Moore
Amen Trae. We know there’s a good South. Look at Pat, Vivian, Freya and more! RESIST!!
From YouTube (Inequality Media Channel): Why We Must Protect Net Neutrality
The Reich on the left is right. Protect Net Neutrality!! RESIST!!
From Media Matters: Conservative news outlet The Weekly Standard has been approved by Facebook to partner in fact-checking "false news," a partnership that makes little sense given the outlet’s long history of making misleading claims, pushing extreme right-wing talking points, and publishing lies to bolster conservative arguments.
The Weekly Standard’s history of publishing false claims on topics such as the 2012 attacks on diplomatic facilities in Benghazi, the Affordable Care Act, tax cuts, and the war in Iraq, among many others, raises doubts that Facebook is taking the challenge of fact-checking seriously.
As The Guardian reports, The Weekly Standard is the first “explicitly partisan” outlet to partner with Facebook in their effort to fact-check fake news. The decision by Facebook raises concerns over the decision to give a conservative opinion outlet with a history of misinformation unearned influence over the fact-checking process.
Fascist bias is one of the reasons I don’t do Facebook. Those of you that do should make a big stink over this. RESIST!!
Cartoon:
12 Responses to “Open Thread – 12/11/2017”
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5:33 Well, that average seems excessive. It’s not as if it were brand new.
TC, I know you consider truthout too far left even for us, but this appears to be well researched and factual, and applicable.
Thank God/Dog/Ceiling Cat for BOTH your Senators, TC! (Pete deFazio ain’t bad, either.)
Trae – If you hadn’t, I would have (which would have made for a very long comment). Thanks. Yes, there is a good South. Besides those you mentioned, Edie, the Rev. Dr. Barber, John Pavlovitz, and, as you said, more.
<-Reich – It’s already not free, in that one pays a fee for access. But one can shop for the best rate, and once one pays the fee, one can go anywhere in the internet that one wants (even paywalls can be worked aroubd.) Destroying Net Neutrality is likely to destroy the Resistance.
Media Matters – Indeed. I don’t do Facebook either, but if anyone clicked on my second link above, you know some very important people do – important in themselves, and important for us to get their message, not “fact-checked” by Nazis. I’ll be happy to sign any petition one doesn’t have to be a member to sign.
Cartoon – Hmmmmph. More “Gross” than “Grand” if you ask me.
JD, it’s not that Truth-Out is too far left, but they are often wing-nutty. They encouraged voting for Jill Stein and writing-in Bernie. They Started life as a so-called 9/11 Truth site. Occasionally they do produce a good article, but I don’t want to use then, because they play fast and loose with the facts so often. Associating with them calls our integrity into question.
This particular one caught my eye because of the health information. I don’t want to lose you.
Good to see the Ponies back in the win column – especially against the Jets.
Let us hope that Doug Jones does beat Roy Moore. That could be the last glimmer of hope for this country.
Keep fighting for Net Neutrality! You cannot sign enough petitions. You cannot send your Senators and Representative enough messages, tweets, phone calls, post cards, singing telegrams, etc.
Trae: Love this guy. “Yosemite Sham”…Loved his rallying cry at the end, hope Jones wins!!
Mr. Reich: Spot on, well said, Mr. Reich. Keep the petitions coming for Net Neutrality.
MM: Thanks for getting this out there….. and will pass this one on as well.
Cartoon: Gnarled (gross) ole pervs.
WoW! Good for your guys!! YAY! Hope that your COPD gets better with each passing day. Enjoy your evening, take care, and Thanks, Tom.
OK. Here’s one.
Trae rocks! The Good South rocks!
Robert Reich: “Free from corporate control and influence!” “…jeopardize our democracy.” But, “jeopardize our democracy,” is precisely what tDump, and the Koch owned GOP want to do!!
I’m reading a new book, and here is a bit of a lengthy synopsis that is all about what I just wrote:
In “Democracy in Chains-The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America,” by Nancy MacClean: The 1956 SCOTUS decision in Brown v. Board of Education, was more than a decision to end segregated schools, it was, to a couple of well educated sons of the South, former Governor of Virginia, Colgate whitehead Darden, Jr., and James McGill Buchanan, it “boded a sea change on much more..”“At a minimum, the federal courts could no longer be counted on to defer reflexively to states’ rights arguments.” And it might intervene “when presented with compelling evidence that a state action was in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of “equal protection,” under the law.” Given Virginia’s “archaic’ labor relations, its measures to suppress voting, or its effort to buttress the power of reactionary rural whites by underrepresenting the moderate voters of the cities and suburbs of Northern Virginia,” things could get out of hand. “Federal meddling could rise to levels once unimaginable.”So, Buchanan set himself the goal of battling this unwanted Federal incursion, which threatened to “tell his people how to run their society.” And then tax them in the process of going about making the requisite changes. So, he arranged with Darden, then the president of the U. of V., “…to create a new center on the campus of the University of Virginia, to be used “…to create a new school of political economy and social philosophy. It would be “designed with a quiet political agenda: “to defeat the ‘perverted form’ of liberalism” that threatened he and his people. In the 1860’s John C. Calhoun, of South Carolina, had gone about protecting what he saw as his wealthy class’s rights to “constrict the operations of democratic government. He created a “set of constitutional gadgets” for just that purpose! “Calhoun and Buchanan both devised constitutional mechanisms to protect an elite economic minority against ‘exploitation’ by majorities of their fellow citizens….”This concept was introduced to Charles Koch, who took it and is still running with it, under the name of “Libertarianism,” which translates to the liberty to do as he, and his compatriots see fit, in order to twist the constitution to their greedy ends. At this point they have succeeded in quietly taking over the GOP, which is, now, an uncompromising battering ram, attacking the very heart of what Democracy stands for, the Demos of the ancient Greeks.“The revival of these tactics is a core theme of this book. What we are seeing today is a new iteration of that very old impulse in America: the quest of some of the propertied (always, it bears noting, a particularly ideologically extreme -and some would say greedy- subsection of the propertied) to restrict the promise of democracy for the many, acting in the knowledge that the majority would choose other policies if it could.
Trae Crowder: It’s heartwarming to see that so many Americans in the South do not support Moore. And I hope that today (it’s Tuesday here already) the majority of voters in Alabama think the same way, because sadly generalizations are all that’s remembered in history. If Roy Moore is elected as Senator, Alabama and all its people will be remembered as having lost its moral compass on Tuesday 12 December 2017.
Robert Reich: Corporate power grab is the only thing that really trickles down from the very rich to us. It’s started with taking control of politics and a large part of the media, then legislation and through that they take over the last thing almost all of us are share: the internet. There are already cities around the world who are building their own internet networks to avoid censorship and big brother watching them, but through their limited availability will only divide the world in corporate controlled vs free speech/free thought even more.
MM: What? Facebook partnering with a notorious alternate-fact distributor to fact-check false news is worse than a butcher who inspects his own meats (Dutch proverb). The Weekly standard will pass his own false news off as real news, and anything contrary to their opinion won’t pass the check. Facebook might as well have asked Steve Bannon to fact-check. Or is he the man behind it all? So glad I never trusted Facebook.
Cartoon: Bingo!
Puzzle — 5:27 No escargot soaked in garlic butter for you Puddy Tat!
YouTube — I sure hope Trae is correct about Alabamans, and more generally the south.
You have the Alabama by-election on Tuesday while here, north of the 49th, we had 4 national by-elections. Three of the 4 went to Trudeau’s Liberals. The one closest to me is just across the Fraser River in Surrey-White Rock, a traditionally Conservative riding. Although Harper is gone, the Conservative are still basically the same. May Alabama’s by-election be as positive as ours were.
Robert Reich — Net Neutrality MUST remain. Stop the oligarchs! Stop Republicans! Stop Drumpf!
Media Matters — With tasking the Evening Standard to do fact checking, it is clear that FB does not take fact checking seriously! FB needs to have a body of professionals who truly understand fact checking and can do it in a non partisan, unbiased way. That excludes the Evening Standard and the likes of Faux Noise who might try to sell themselves fact checkers (a new product line that they would relish, no doubt). More succinctly:
What is Zuckerberg trying to do? Is he conservative?
Cartoon — Yup! Although I agree with JD — more GROSS than Grand!
You did the wrong puzzle, Squatch. I’m driving the S car. Watch my S car go!
Zuckerberg claims to be not partisan, but his actions, like this one, belie his claim.
OK, I did that one too — 6:59. I closed the door on that puzzle.
Thanks all.
Gross vs Grand. I stand corrected!