2016 United States Election

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Very interesting, N.E.B.

[Inanna]

I think we are looking for scapegoats.

[Frelga]

To some extent, probably. On the other hand, it is important to understand what happened and how to do better next time.

On a somewhat related note:
We Tracked Down A Fake-News Creator In The Suburbs. Here's What We Learned

TL;DR - a self-described Democrat
1. invents fake news stories
2. publishes them on fake news sites
3.shuffles links into conservative Facebooks groups
...
4. PROFIT

No, actually profit, from the ads on the fake news sites. Tens of thousands of dollars a month.

Well, this isn't just a Trump-supporter problem. This is a right-wing issue. Sarah Palin's famous blasting of the lamestream media is kind of record and testament to the rise of these kinds of people. The post-fact era is what I would refer to it as. This isn't something that started with Trump. This is something that's been in the works for a while. His whole campaign was this thing of discrediting mainstream media sources, which is one of those dog whistles to his supporters. When we were coming up with headlines it's always kind of about the red meat. Trump really got into the red meat. He knew who his base was. He knew how to feed them a constant diet of this red meat.

We've tried to do similar things to liberals. It just has never worked, it never takes off. You'll get debunked within the first two comments and then the whole thing just kind of fizzles out.

[Inanna]

Yes, I saw that.

I'm just not convinced that if you isolate one cause, that one cause will account for much.

[Frelga]

Oh, I'm not saying that this specific guy was the cause. He was simply able to capitalize on the "post-fact" nature of conservative information sourcing, carefully nurtured by the Republican leadership in the past decade and a half, which IMO was on the short list of reasons we got here.

[Inanna]

Right. It's depressing. .

The comment about liberals sounds like academics. Publish an article about how effective academics are, and it will be followed by rebuttals from academics.

[Cenedril_Gildinaur]

Regarding Roe V. Wade.

If the case had come up in the first place under Chief Justice Roberts, he would have voted contrary to the way the ruling now stands, but he is a big fan of Stare Decsis and has made it clear that he will support prior court rulings more than any desire to overturn that ruling. Even if Trump did appoint judges with the goal of overturning that ruling, doing so will have to get past Justice Roberts first.

[Cerin]

Regarding Roe V. Wade.

If the case had come up in the first place under Chief Justice Roberts, he would have voted contrary to the way the ruling now stands, but he is a big fan of Stare Decsis and has made it clear that he will support prior court rulings more than any desire to overturn that ruling.

Roberts said he was a big fan of stare decisis, but that turned out to be a bunch of baloney.

[Cerin]

Having been away for a while, I have only just begun to read this thread, so please pardon me if I'm repeating something previously mentioned (I won't be posting much on political subjects, and I shall read a lot more of what has already been said here before commenting further), but on this note, it's interesting to read that Germany, believing the U.S. election to have been manipulated by Russia (partly through the dissemination of fake news), is taking steps to make sure the same thing doesn't happen in their elections next year: Don't Forget It Happened.

This is a rather lengthy expose of the Washington Post piece linked in the article mentioned above. A couple of excerpts:

The Washington Post article in question, written by Craig Timberg <snip> relied upon only two sources for his dramatic “exposé” purporting to prove that a massive Russian propaganda campaign had surreptitiously attempted to undermine (perhaps successfully!) the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign and to throw the race to Donald Trump, at the same time undermining US foreign policy and faith in the US government while elevating the reputation of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Both sources are falsely described by Timberg as being “two teams of independent researchers.” The assumption we clearly are meant to have is that these organizations have no institutional bias.

In fact, the first of these sources, the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI), turns out to be a hoary relic of the Cold War founded in 1955 by Robert Strausz-Hupé, an Austrian emigré and passionate anti-Communist. It has continued its anti-Russian propaganda stance since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the 2002 death of its founder and now boasts on its board of trustees jailbait like former Reagan National Security Advisor Robert McFarlane, a key player in the Reagan-era Iran Contra scandal who pleaded guilty to four counts of lying to Congress but was pardoned by President Reagan, arch-neocon and Russia-phobe Robert Kagan, a key promoter of the the US invasion or Iraq in 2003, and a whole host of other right-wing anti-Russian fanatics.

At least FRPI is willing to let people know who it is and who is running the joint. In contrast, the other of Timberg’s sources, PropOrNot, an organization with a website, PropOrNot.com, founded only several months ago, remains totally secret, providing no information on its site about its origins, its funding, its leadership or its staff. And yet Timberg confidently claims its information about Russia’s alleged epic propaganda effort was the result of the painstaking analytical work of these “experts.” In fact Timberg says the organization’s executive director, whom he quotes, asked for and received anonymity along with all his staff because they wanted to “avoid being targeted by Russia’s legions of skilled hackers.”

<snip>

To get the full picture of how credulous and unprofessional — or wilfully biased — Timberg’s editors at the Washington Post (often still considered one of the nation’s top “newspapers of record”), were in not vetting his article, read the Intercept’s article "Washington Post Disgracefully Promotes a McCarthyite Blacklist from a New, Hidden and Very Shady Group," which devastatingly eviscerates both PropOrNot and the Post.

Suffice to say that besides allowing Timberg to use as the key source of his article and dramatic media blacklist an anonymous and clearly partisan group, PropOrNot, the Post’s editors also never required their supposedly crack “technology reporter” to even attempt to contact a single editor or journalist at any of the named alleged purveyors or “useful idiots” he was accusing of secretly spreading Russian-sourced “false news.” There’s not even a perfunctory: “Efforts to contact the editors at Counterpunch were unsuccessful” in the entire piece. Timberg and the editors of a paper that once gave us the Watergate story that brought down President Richard Nixon clearly didn’t even consider such basics of journalism important!

What it appears we really have here courtesy of Timberg and the Washington Post is a classic piece of McCarthyite red-baiting propaganda, complete with a call for the FBI and US Justice Department to investigate those on the list for possible violation of the US Espionage Act, the Foreign Agent Registration Act “and other related laws.” Any site that is critical of US foreign policy, who says anything favorable about Russia, or who was critical of Hillary Clinton, is suspected of being a Russian propagandist.

http://www.nationofchange.org/2016/11/2 ... ive-media/

[yovargas]

(Not sure where to post this, this seems as good a place as any.)

Was curious what others might think of this infographic. I follow none of these except occasionally NPR so I have little opinion on the subject.

15401078_1435189796521046_2415818405851899263_n.jpg (92.96 KiB) Viewed 8274 times

[Cenedril_Gildinaur]

Pretty good.

[narya]

Stealing for FB, my main source of misinformation. But I'd like to attribute the source. Does "Basic AF" mean what I think it means, but am too polite to say?

[Frelga]

Yes.

[Inanna]

What's basic AF?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Primula Baggins]

Basic as f***.

[Jude]

I don't think I've even heard that expression

[yovargas]

Do you even internet, bro?

[Frelga]

I don't think I've even heard that expression

Once again reinforcing the stereotypes about the politeness of Canadians.

[RoseMorninStar]

I've not heard the expression before either. At least, not all 3 words together as a regular phrase.

[narya]

Sadly, I have. Repeatedly.