Hmmmm, This Will Be Interesting

For those of us who try to get to the truth of a matter, and do our background research, having to wade through "conspiracy" theories, RWNJ websites, gossip and other MSM misinformation takes up most of our time. Usually the Newsmax, Breitbart, or anything with patriot, freedom, or christian in the moniker gives it away…

"Google could launch an effort to keep trolls and bad information at bay, with a program that would rank websites according to veracity, and sort results according to those rankings. Currently, the search engine ranks pages according to popularity, which means that pages containing unsubstantiated celebrity gossip or conspiracy theories, for example, show up very high."

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/page/315476_Anti-Science_Advocates_Are_Fre

"By checking pages against that database, and cross-referencing related facts, the research team believes the algorithm could assign each page a truth score. Pages with a high proportion of false claims would be bumped down in the search results."      http://www.wcvb.com/money/the-truth-according-to-google/31602880

It would be a help to be able to cross check facts, numbers, authors and their political relationships, and the history behind the current debates. And to "follow the money…." Only then are you able to form an intelligent opinion on any subject.

Of course there are certain portions of the citizenry who are opposed to such a thing…

“I worry about this issue greatly… My site gets a significant portion of its daily traffic from Google,” Anthony Watts, who runs a popular blog for climate change deniers, told FoxNews.com.

But in the end…

"it's not really true that the facts have a liberal bias. Or a conservative one. That line was a joke……... The truth is that facts don't have any bias at all; they just sit there and exist. It's we who have the biases."
http://tinyurl.com/lkesaru

Eeney Meeney Miney Mo, Catch A .......

Everybody knows the rest of that little rhyme....and you're lying if you're of a "certain age" and say you don't. Yea...we've ALL been a little racist in our lives. I'm kind of disgusted with all of us at the moment....left and right. Right- for their blatant racism, sexism, and general "me before everybody else" attitude. Left- for their "we're above it all", take the media's version and run attitude. (I thought WE were the ones that had all the facts, didn't join the fray, and were the "lets the story play out" before pointing fingers.) Hypocrites. 

I know, this Paula Deen scandal, you say, is a symptom of all that is wrong with the south. You are using it to prove your point that this part of the country is decades behind the rest of the country, and that Blue states are more "advanced" than Red ones. I get that!! I've lived in both..there is a world of difference.....BUT before you all go around beating your chest about bringing down this lady that has worked for decades to raise her family and build this business (whether YOU like it or not..and you are entitled to your view of old-style southern cooking, etc. I was raised on it..but I now view my diet differently.)...why not bother to get some background. All anybody has heard has been the other side, and Paula's naive and poor attempts to redeem herself. (Where was her attorney? This should have been a NO.) 

Last year was the first attempt at this: http://abcnews.go.com/... 

The original letter (a must-read)  from the plaintiff's attorney: http://media.cmgdigita... 

And now the lawyer of this woman is preparing to file a lawsuit for slander against Bobby Deen for publicly defending his mother and her business? 
 WALMART, the company that gets all its products from dirt cheap labor overseas, cuts everybody's hours, used the "Made in America" meme to con the public for years, has a lawsuit against it in Mexico, and pays everyone so little that they give their new "associates" applications for SNAP when they are  hired......

And TARGET....where they support antigay rights and make employees watch antiunion videos? THESE companies have the gall to say Paul Deen does not reflect their values????

Please......give me a break. Trial by media, a favorite pastime of the American public and our "judicial" system. No matter how far we advance.....our basic nature never changes, I'm sorry to say. 

Pushing Their Lies...or Just Pushing Their Luck ?

A dear friend of mine has a saying that pretty much describes the Team Romney style of campaigning for the highest office in this country: "Dazzle 'em with your bullshit." Of course, I don't think it's just political ploy for these people.....I'm beginning to think it's a way of LIFE.

We don't need no sticking FACTS.

"During a discussion this morning with Laura Ingraham on the subject of Romney’s truthfulness, or lack thereof, they played a clip of Democrats and other liberals accusing Romney of having lied during the debate. Afterward, Steve Doocey sneered, “That’s all they got?”

http://www.newshounds.us/who_cares_if_romney_lied_during_the_debate_he_looked_good_10092012

Who cares if his rapid-fire speech, and oh-so-caring demeanor were nothing but a last ditch effort to appeal human-like for the "undecided" voters....the ones that wait till the last minute to even get interested at all. In the words of Don Henley it goes something like this:

Well, I coulda been an actor, but I wound up here 

I just have to look good, I don't have to be clear.... 

We can do "The Innuendo" 

We can dance and sing 

When it's said and done we haven't told you a thing 

We all know that Crap is King.....

An article in Rasmussen Reports (horrors!) summed the impression I got as I forced myself to watch this performance the other night:

"True, President Obama looked tired, while Romney was brimming with old ideas. But Romney's master-of-the-universe act was not universally admired. It will be turned on him...

Team Romney was understandably bucked up by Obama's failure to punch back. But Obama and his people eventually will. When they do, the master-of-the-universe bit will get taken apart -- and in a masterful way."

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/political_commentary/commentary_by_froma_harrop/mitt_s_master_act_not_beloved_by_all

I certainly hope so!

Update: I'm Not Alone

I was beginning to think I was living in my own alternative reality, that I was looking at things differently than most intelligent people. But alas, I found I'm not alone. Today I read this:


Paul Krugman         NY Times Opinion Pages

The Mighty Wurlitzer in Acton

Read the comments on today’s column and you’ll find many, many references to the alleged fact that the estimated cost of the ACA has risen by a trillion dollars — which happens to be a complete lie.

The remarkable thing is how quickly the lie has become part of what everyone on the right knows. And even if some of the people citing this “fact” could somehow be convinced that it wasn’t so, they’d brush it off, because there’s such a pattern of liberal duplicity, demonstrated by lots of other supposed facts — all of which are also lies.

This is the reality of modern American politics: a large and cohesive bloc of voters lives in an alternative reality, fed fake facts by Fox and Rush — whom they listen to out of tribal affiliation — and completely unaware that it’s all fiction.

It’s also, by the way, why attempts at outreach by Obama will fail. Even if he gives the GOP 95 percent of what it wants, these voters will never hear about it; they will still know, just know, that he’s a radical bent on destroying America.

The problem remains: how do we combat this perception? Are we doomed to be overwhelmed by the radicals on the Right and their well organized (and funded) propaganda machine? Have people lost all common sense? Or are we too far down the rabbit hole these days to pull ourselves out?

DON'T CONFUSE THEM WITH THE FACTS!

The following is an article, in full, that I came across today. It is a "must read" for all of us trying to make sense of the political world today!

Leonard Pitts Jr. / Syndicated columnist

Don't confuse them with facts
To listen to talk radio, to watch TV pundits, to read a newspaper's online message board, is to realize that increasingly, we are a people estranged from critical thinking, divorced from logic, alienated from even objective truth.

I got an e-mail the other day that depressed me.

It concerned a piece I recently did that mentioned Henry Johnson, who was awarded the French Croix de Guerre in World War I for single-handedly fighting off a company of Germans (some accounts say there were 14, some say almost 30, the ones I find most authoritative say there were about two dozen) who threatened to overrun his post.

Johnson managed this despite the fact that he was only 5-foot-4 and 130 pounds, despite the fact that his gun had jammed, despite the fact that he was wounded 21 times.

My mention of Johnson's heroics drew a rebuke from a fellow named Ken Thompson, which I quote verbatim and in its entirety:

"Hate to tell you that blacks were not allowed into combat intell (sic) 1947, that fact. World War II ended in 1945. So all that feel good, one black man killing two dozen Nazi, is just that, PC bull."

In response, my assistant, Judi Smith, sent Mr. Thompson proof of Johnson's heroics: a link to his page on the Web site of Arlington National Cemetery. She thought this settled the matter.

Thompson's reply? "There is no race on headstones and they didn't come up with the story in tell (sic) 2002."

Judi: "I guess you can choose to believe Arlington National Cemetery or not."

Thompson: "It is what it is, you don't believe either ... "

At this point, Judi forwarded me their correspondence, along with a despairing note. She is probably somewhere drinking right now.

You see, like me, she can remember a time when facts settled arguments. This is back before everything became a partisan shouting match, back before it was permissible to ignore or deride as "biased" anything that didn't support your worldview.

If you and I had an argument and I produced facts from an authoritative source to back me up, you couldn't just blow that off. You might try to undermine my facts, might counter with facts of your own, but you couldn't just pretend my facts had no weight or meaning.

But that's the intellectual state of the union these days, as evidenced by all the people who still don't believe the president was born in Hawaii or that the planet is warming. And by Mr. Thompson, who doesn't believe Henry Johnson did what he did.

I could send him more proof, I suppose. Johnson is lauded in history books ("Before the Mayflower" by Lerone Bennett Jr., "The Dictionary of American Negro Biography" by Rayford Logan and Michael Winston) and in contemporaneous accounts (The Saturday Evening Post, The New York Times). I could also point out that blacks have fought in every war in American history, though before Harry Truman desegregated the military in 1948, they did so in Jim Crow units. Also, there were no Nazis in World War I.

But those are "facts," and the whole point here is that facts no longer mean what they once did. I suppose I could also ignore him. But you see, Ken Thompson is not just some isolated eccentric. No, he is the Zeitgeist personified.

To listen to talk radio, to watch TV pundits, to read a newspaper's online message board, is to realize that increasingly, we are a people estranged from critical thinking, divorced from logic, alienated from even objective truth. We admit no ideas that do not confirm us, hear no voices that do not echo us, sift out all information that does not validate what we wish to believe.

I submit that any people thus handicapped sow the seeds of their own decline; they respond to the world as they wish it were rather to the world as it is. That's the story of the Iraq war.

But objective reality does not change because you refuse to accept it. The fact that you refuse to acknowledge a wall does not change the fact that it's a wall.

And you shouldn't have to hit it to find that out.

Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts Jr.'s column appears regularly on editorial pages of The Times. His e-mail address is: lpitts@miamiherald.com