November 17, 2016


News and Views


http://www.cbsnews.com/news/facebook-fake-election-news-more-popular-than-real-news-buzzfeed-investigation/

CBS NEWS November 17, 2016, 8:47 AM
Probe reveals stunning stats about fake election headlines on Facebook

Play VIDEO -- Google and Facebook take aim at fake news
Photograph -- You might have seen an article with the headline blaring “Pope Francis Shocks World, Endorses Donald Trump for President” on your Facebook feed in September. ctm-clean-7am-cr470c-20161117-frame-79651.jpg.
Related: Facebook fake news creator claims he put Trump in White House


People who got their election news on Facebook might have been looking at more fake stories than real ones.

BuzzFeed News concluded that the fake clickbait headlines hooked users more often than real headlines, after analyzing the last three months of campaign coverage. The report compared fake news from hoax sites and hyper-partisan blogs to legitimate new articles from 19 major news outlets, including the New York Times, Fox News and even CBS News, reports CBS News correspondent Jericka Duncan.

You might have even shared the article or just clicked “like” or “wow” or made a comment. The problem is the story was false, joining the ranks of other fake, highly shared or liked articles, with headlines like “WikiLeaks CONFIRMS Hillary Sold Weapons to ISIS,” or “Hillary is Disqualified from Holding Any Federal Office.”

BuzzFeed News said during the last three months of the presidential campaign, of the top 20 fake election-related articles on Facebook, all but three were all anti-Clinton or pro-Trump. And Facebook users engaged with them using a share, a like or a comment more than 8.7 million times.

But they engaged with the top 20 election-related stories from legitimate news outlets – both pro and con for each candidate – fewer than 7.4 million times.

While campaigning for Hillary Clinton the day before the election, President Obama criticized how false information can spread on the social network.

“As long as it’s on Facebook and people can see it, as long as it’s on social media, people start believing it. And it creates this dust cloud of nonsense,” the president said.

According to Pew Research, 66 percent of Facebook users said they get news from the site. But at a tech conference last Thursday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg dismissed the issue.

“I think the idea that fake news on Facebook influenced the election in any way, I think is a pretty crazy idea,” Zuckerberg said.

But in a post a few days later, he acknowledged Facebook has begun to look into ways for the online community to flag hoaxes and fake news.

Still, platforms like Facebook and Google could face legal hurdles in addressing the problem.

“There’s legislation in this country that says if you are a platform, you are not liable for what people publish on you,” said Nick Thompson, editor of NewYorker.com. “However, if you start to edit what people publish on your platform, then your legal obligations increase.”

According to experts, it’s difficult to filter out fake news in real time. But Facebook and Google have each announced new plans to prevent fake stories from spreading by restricting advertising with websites that spread fake content.



When I see those spectacular headlines, I have noticed that they are always running down the side of the screen, on the bottom, or sometimes across the top, but not in the center of the page like the legitimate stories. Sometimes they move around to distract the reader’s eye, and even evade my pointer when I attempt to click them away using the X at the top of the “article.” Nine out of ten times there will be, in small and lightly colored letters, some statement that gives away the fact that it is, in fact, an AD for a site whose real goal is to give me a virus or place adware on my computer. But the sneakiest of all are those who are simply writing FICTION that sounds plausible enough to get my attention. Usually if I Google their website and say “comments” I can find articles calling them out as fake news.

I do enjoy the articles, just as we used to buy our copy of Mad Magazine so long ago and run through it, giggling. My favorite modern-day example is the famous “jackass” interaction between Putin and Obama. Go to the website and read it. It’s only a few paragraphs long, but masterfully composed. What it did for me was to grant a secret wish that the always self-controlled Obama had actually lambasted the arrogant JA in truth.

But he will never do anything like that. First, because he is like Mr. Spock. He is logical to the hilt. Cool! Second, because he has a good idea of how a President of the US should behave, and tries to do it. I have heard the tone of his voice just once or twice when he was genuinely angry, so I know that he can be forceful, and I will not forget the well planned and highly justifiable assassination of the villain of our decade, Osama bin Laden. SEE THE EXCELLENT ARTICLE BELOW:


http://dcxposed.com/2013/09/07/did-obama-really-call-putin-a-jackass-no-the-consequences-of-political-satire/

DID OBAMA REALLY CALL PUTIN A JACKASS? NO. – THE CONSEQUENCES OF POLITICAL SATIRE
ED BROWN— SEPTEMBER 7, 2013


On September 6th Andy Borowitz, writing for The New Yorker, published an article titled G20 ENDS ABRUPTLY AS OBAMA CALLS PUTIN A JACKASS which has caused quite a stir on social media. He claimed that U.S. President Barack Obama went on a name calling tirade, hurling insults at his Russian nemesis Vladimir Putin.

The article is pure satire but from the activity I’ve witnessed on facebook and twitter, many people are under the impression that it’s fact and that’s a shame because nothing could be further from the truth. How do I know this? Because there isn’t one single news outlet besides The New Yorker with a corroborating story – and trust me, if it was true every news site on the web would be running it!

Yes, there are dozens of smaller blogs which have copied and pasted it in it’s entirety directly from the New Yorker site but there are no other original reports written by anyone other than Borowitz. It’s also obvious as you scan through Borowitz’s other articles that all of his “work” is simply satire. Many of them make me wish they were true, but none of them are. To back up my assertion that it’s false I offer this rather in depth analysis of the fictitious report. In Borotwitz’s defense, The New Yorker is a newsy, entertainment type magazine and not a news agency.

But misleading information is just that and there can be huge consequences when the funny story happens to involve political leaders currently engaged in determining whether or not they’re gonna blow up the damned world. I wish The New Yorker would put forth more of an effort to label Andy’s work as satire, but scanning the article page I can’t find a single reference denoting it as such.

What are the implications of deceitful news journalism? Why do people do it and why should they stop? IMMEDIATELY!

The share counters on The New Yorker article, at the time of this writing, are approaching 100k with about 10k more added hourly. But that’s just share stats … the actual page views, based on my experience with news website monetization, of 100k facebook shares would be around 300k-500k page views for such a hot article. Based on the average news website’s CPC(cost per click) of just google adsense alone, that’s potentially thousands of dollars of ad revenue – ultimately depending on how long it remains popular. But that’s just monetization – there’s also a huge benefit to The New Yorker website because that much social media activity, which is now Google’s number one ranking factor, helps boost their rankings in all the major search engines. Alot! So they earn more from more traffic, which causes them to become more popular, which causes their rankings to rise even higher, on and on …. to infinity. I consider this stealing when the page views are the result of a fabricated news article – especially one which dupes the public into thinking that it’s true. And these are the least of the consequences of dishonest news reporting intended to mislead unsuspecting visitors into sharing, reading and clicking; fabricated news has a much more sinister implication – the discrediting of those who are gullible enough to buy in to it and then share it as if it were true! (don’t feel bad, keep reading – you’ll figure out how to end this vicious cycle once and for all, if you are willing to do your homework).

Anyone who reads DCX regularly knows this isn’t an Obama friendly environment, but I stop short of fabricating news articles – even about The One, because it could damage not only my credibility but also the credibility of truthful news reporting in general. There’s been numerous “news-worthy” appearing websites pop up recently specializing in satirical news articles which, at first glance appear to be genuine. I’m totally against that entire concept because it muddies an already choppy body of political water – one that’s becoming more and more difficult for the average reader to navigate. Bloggers and many reputable journalist as well have realized that real, honest, truthful news reporting is hard work and doesn’t draw the page views and clicks that simply “conjuring up” a sensationalized story out of thin air does (not to mention that’s much much less work, aye AB?). An entire ocean of news websites and blogs, this one included, have sprung up in recent years and now there’s a dozen of them on every internet street corner in town. So how does the news ‘consumer’ differentiate between truth and satire? How do you know that post you’re about to make on facebook leads to a truthful news article? Well, there’s no 100% foolproof way … but there are some tactics which can help you avoid spreading deceit.

First – a truthful report will typically, not always, but typically contain at least one, sometimes many, glowing hyperlinks which point back to the authors main source of information. To verify the source you simply click the link and away you go. When you land on the source page – and if that page is owned by a reputable agency – it’s a pretty safe bet to assume the report is true. But there are exceptions to that rule, as The New Yorker has proven in this instance with it’s “Obama called Putin a jackass” report, which has been duplicated on other sites across the web by the dozens … simply copied and pasted into blogs and published without any of the authors questioning the authenticity. But why? Why would an honest blog owner copy and paste an article that isn’t true? Because the source of the information is the very well respected and reputable The New Yorker. They see the hot story, they see the fancy website, they see the big, bold, black letters spelling out the name of a magazine which has been around for ages – and they assume the story is legit. Don’t assume anything is legit if there isn’t corroborating evidence, in triplicate, from sources you know and respect. And then, even then, you should check to make sure the author doesn’t specialize in political humor or satire.

So .. even if you find yourself reading a very reputable website’s version of a news article, you should still return to the search engine of your choice and perform a check of the main keywords which your story of interest is about. If it’s legit you’ll see search engine results from varying news agencies – ALL WITH DIFFERENTLY WORDED TITLES. And that’s so important that I had to all-cap-it. Legitimate news sources DO NOT COPY AND PASTE titles or content. If you search for an article and all of the results in the search engine query come back as duplicates, one after the other all the way down the page – RED FLAG! Legit articles will always, ALWAYS, be written and re-written and so will their titles.

The consequences of deceitful news for the Patriot movement, which is firmly opposed to the tactics and policies of President Obama, are HUGE! Trust me, there are plenty of disparaging reports based on truth out there – we don’t need to conjure up fictitious ones. There’s nothing that tickles a socialist democrat more than seeing conservatives sharing inaccurate news stories and passing them off as true to their friends on social media – especially if it revolves around Barack Obama. Too many times I’ve seen false news stories, or sometimes even doctored-up photo’s – being shared and commented on by good people who were duped into believing they were genuine. Many times those bits and pieces of content are actually created by and leaked into our network in an attempt to make us look foolish – just so they can come along later after it was proven to be false – point their finger, laugh – and imply that we’re not to be trusted or believed … and everything we say about the President, or anyone else in the political arena, must surely be false – surely our convictions are based on some other lie that we were eager to swallow.



http://www.cbsnews.com/news/would-it-be-legal-for-trump-to-hire-jared-kushner-for-a-white-house-job/

Would it be legal for Trump to hire Jared Kushner for a White House job?
By REENA FLORES CBS NEWS
November 17, 2016, 2:12 PM


As President-elect Donald Trump considers staffing his administration, the consideration of one person in Mr. Trump’s inner circle is already presenting some potential legal obstacles: Jared Kushner, husband to Ivanka Trump and the president-elect’s son-in-law.

The 35-year-old Kushner -- who, like his father-in-law, is a New York real estate developer -- has taken on an outsize role in Mr. Trump’s tight-knit circle of advisers, first during the campaign and now on the president-elect’s White House transition team. And Kushner’s role could expand. There has already been some implication that he could be privy to the Presidential Daily Briefing (PDB) -- in order to receive it, Kushner would need a “top secret/SCI” clearance, a former top CIA official told CBS News.

Top Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway was asked by reporters Wednesday whether it would be appropriate for Kushner to get a security clearance.

“It’s appropriate for whoever’s going to get the presidential daily briefing to have a security clearance,” said Conway. “It’s not just appropriate, necessary.”

But an appointment for Kushner in the Trump White House could run afoul of federal anti-nepotism laws. A 1967 statute explicitly forbids the president from appointing relations -- the law was written to include a son-in-law -- to any executive agency.

Who is Jared Kushner?
Play VIDEO
Who is Jared Kushner?

Here’s what the statute says: “A public official may not appoint, employ, promote, advance, or advocate for appointment, employment, promotion, or advancement, in or to a civilian position in the agency in which he is serving or over which he exercises jurisdiction or control any individual who is a relative of the public official.”

This would seem to bar Kushner from taking a role within the White House -- though, as CBS News legal reporter Paula Reid points out, there are some exceptions.

The law allows for waivers in the event of a national disaster or other unforeseen circumstances. But it’s hard to argue that transitioning to the presidency could be considered an unforeseen circumstance. In any case, such a waiver would only allow for a temporary appointment.

Lawyers for Mr. Trump could try to argue that the part of the law which prohibits relatives from getting paid means an unpaid role would be legal.

“An individual appointed, employed, promoted, or advanced in violation of this section is not entitled to pay, and money may not be paid from the Treasury as pay to an individual so appointed, employed, promoted, or advanced,” the statute reads. Kushner himself has floated the possibility of advising the White House without pay, according to the Wall Street Journal.

It is not clear whether the statute would apply to the White House, which, it could be argued, might not be technically considered a government agency. The original statute was written as a response to President John F. Kennedy’s appointment of his brother, Bobby Kennedy, to head the Justice Department as attorney general.

And despite the existence of the law, there’s no clear penalty or repercussion if an individual -- much less the president -- violates the statute.

For now, top Trump officials are saying little about whether or not Kushner will have a defined role in the White House.

“He obviously is incredibly important to his father-in-law President-Elect Trump and was [a] big part of our election victory, frankly,” Conway told “CBS This Morning” Thursday. “I’m sure that he and his wife and her brothers will continue to be very supportive. But time will tell in terms of the positions that different people fill.”

CBS News’ Paula Reid contributed to this report.



EXCERPT – “It is not clear whether the statute would apply to the White House, which, it could be argued, might not be technically considered a government agency. The original statute was written as a response to President John F. Kennedy’s appointment of his brother, Bobby Kennedy, to head the Justice Department as attorney general. And despite the existence of the law, there’s no clear penalty or repercussion if an individual -- much less the president -- violates the statute.”


There was a dustup when President Bill Clinton appointed his wife Hillary to set up and oversee a government health plan. I don’t remember if that was over the nepotism question, or just because of the hatred for Hillary coming from the Republican side of the aisle. I don’t know whether or not she was to be paid a salary, either. There were complaints that such a project wasn’t a proper role for the First Lady, and probably not for ANY LADY at that time. Politics in this country is so unfair that I feel discouraged at this time, knowing that I won’t live long enough very possibly, to see a WOMAN in the White House or to see a great Democratic Socialist there, either. That does sadden me, but I have after all, lived through a very exciting period in the US and World History.



http://www.cbsnews.com/news/joe-biden-offers-frank-analysis-of-democratic-election-losses/

Joe Biden offers frank analysis of Democratic election losses
By JULIA BOCCAGNO CBS NEWS
November 17, 2016, 2:39 PM

Play VIDEO -- Biden, Obama memes have the internet in hysterics


Vice President Joe Biden talked about why Democrats lost the presidential election -- saying bluntly that the party had collectively overlooked key constituencies, particularly rural, working-class Americans.

“We lost because of awful lot of hard-working Americans who live in areas where we did not pay much attention to,” he said at a reception celebrating a Hindu festival. “Barack Obama won these people. They are not racist. They did not vote for the Democrats this time.”

Globalization, Biden said, has fundamentally altered the economic outlook for these voters -- especially blue-collar white American men -- who are feeling left behind by the political process.

“For the first time in recent memory, this is one section of American population where the life expectancy has gone down,” he added. “It is white American men between the age of 40 and 55. They have the highest suicide rate in America. Because they do not know how to deal with this new incredible change that is taking place in the world.”

“Remember, we won these same people,” Biden continued.

The vice president’s assessment came after he had spent part of the day with his successor, Vice President-elect Mike Pence. Despite campaigning heavily against the Trump-Pence ticket, Biden and his wife, Jill, warmly welcomed Pence and his wife, whom the vice president described as “really fine people.”

But that didn’t stop him from later bringing up the unpopularity of the top of the GOP ticket -- and he acknowledged Hillary Clinton’s unpopularity.

“[Trump] is the most unpopular elected president in American history,” Biden said. “Just as Hillary was very unpopular. There has been no election in American history when the negatives of both the candidates have been this high.”

Biden concluded his speech on a high note, exhorting his audience to take heart.

“I do not care what your political affiliation is, we have to not give up,” he declared. “One election will not change American.” [sic]



EXCERPT – “Vice President Joe Biden talked about why Democrats lost the presidential election -- saying bluntly that the party had collectively overlooked key constituencies, particularly rural, working-class Americans. “We lost because of awful lot of hard-working Americans who live in areas where we did not pay much attention to,” he said at a reception celebrating a Hindu festival. “Barack Obama won these people. They are not racist. They did not vote for the Democrats this time.” …. “For the first time in recent memory, this is one section of American population where the life expectancy has gone down,” he added. “It is white American men between the age of 40 and 55. They have the highest suicide rate in America. Because they do not know how to deal with this new incredible change that is taking place in the world.” “Remember, we won these same people,” Biden continued. …. “I do not care what your political affiliation is, we have to not give up,” he declared. “One election will not change American.” [sic]


I pray that VP Biden is correct, one election won’t change America. Judging from the rapidity with which protesters hit the streets after Trump’s election, I think that if he does try to dismantle democracy in this country, he will meet serious opposition, as Sanders promised from the Progressives in the Legislature as well.