Wednesday, March 21, 2018

Corporate Media: Incapable of Honor

Sampling the fare on the afternoon cable news shows this week, it struck me that the reporters and consultants and party hacks who star in them are not even pretending any more to disseminate information to me, the viewer. They are there for one reason, and one reason only: to bolster one other's talking points about the topic most important to them. Most recently, that prescribed theme has been Trump and Russia and Stormy Daniels.

Occasionally they do reluctantly tear themselves away from their insular conversations to just mention in passing the Mad Bomber of Austin, or to speculate over the guest list of Prince Harry and Princess Sparkle's upcoming nuptials.

Nationwide teacher strikes? Nope. Bernie Sanders's Internet town hall and its estimated one million-plus viewers? Surely, you jest.

On MSNBC Tuesday afternoon, the incessantly chirpy and unabashedly anti-Trump Katy Tur played an endless video loop of a couple of Russians stuffing the ballot boxes to re-elect Vladimir Putin. She went around the table inviting all her guests, one by one, to express their shock and outrage. While acknowledging that the Kremlin itself had released the video, she described the transparency as nothing but a blatant punch in the nose to democracy, even though Russia is not a democracy and never has been. Then she invited her guests to express outrage that Donald Trump had called Putin to congratulate him on his victory - which only proves once again that Trump is a Manchurian candidate and that the Russians obviously have Kompromat on him. 

 “Notable, a big huge flag that Sarah Huckabee Sanders and the White House will not confirm what everybody can see with their own eyes. Video came out just the other day, video looked at by the Associated Press, which actually showed people in Russia stuffing the ballot boxes, yet Sarah Huckabee Sanders and this White House refuses to say that the election in Russia was not fair," Tur said in apparent shock and disbelief.

Over at CNN in the same 2-3 p.m slot, chirpy news personality Brooke Baldwin was playing an endless loop of a couple of Russians stuffing the ballot boxes to re-elect Vladimir Putin before going around the table to invite her featured guests to outdo one another in the outrage department. Then she invited the guests to grouse about Trump's unprecedented refusal to listen to his own security team by calling Putin to suggest a meeting to discuss peace and cutting back a little bit on all the nuclear proliferation.

On MSNBC's "Morning Joe" program today, the ubiquitous John Brennan, late of the CIA, chimed in that the Russians have got to have Kompromat on Trump for him to have so egregiously ignored the ALL CAPS ORDER from his own national security advisers to not congratulate Putin.

The cable TV talkfests could probably save themselves a bundle of money by simply playing an endless loop of all their highly-paid personalities repeating the same Russophobic talking points over and over and over again.

These are some of the same pundits and scolds who just recently spent a gala evening with the whole Trump crime family at the annual Gridiron Dinner, where they joked and canoodled with one another, far away from the prying eyes of the public. It's all a show - of, by, and for the cronies of the permanent ruling media-political establishment.

As former Obama speechwriter David Litt wrote of the hypocrisy of these journalistic scolds toasting Trump and joking with him in a private social setting:
With the free press threatened as never before, a Gridiron that proceeds as if everything’s normal will only make the situation worse. If Trump doubles down on his attacks, journalists who toast him will be ratifying this new arrangement. If his jokes are self-deprecating and his concluding paragraphs full of praise, it will be another sign that this administration can undermine our institutions so long as it pays them lip service.
The media, as has been its custom throughout the history of the Gridiron Incest-fest, dishonorably honored its off-the-record dictum this year even as they gleefully continued their lucrative and frenzied #Resistance reportage for public consumption. Still, as is also their hypocritical custom, they simply couldn't resist sharing with the great unwashed masses Trump's "top five jokes."

He really "let loose," as approvingly noted by the inside-the-Beltway site Axios, with such howlers as "I like chaos, It is really good" and "I offered Jeff Sessions a ride over but he recused himself."

The late Pulitzer Price-winning political novelist and former New York Times reporter Allen Drury described the inbred coziness in his book about political reporting and punditry, Capable of Honor:
Journalists might start their careers determined to tell America the truth honestly and fearlessly regardless of whom it might help or hinder, (but then ) almost without their knowing it they soon begin to write, not for the country, but for each other. They begin to report and interpret events, not according to the rigid standards of honesty upon which the great majority of them have been reared in their pre-Washington days, but according to what might or might not be acceptable in the acidly easygoing wisecracks of the Press Club bar and the parties at which they entertained one another.'
The cable show-people are shameless in their brazens displays of both the intramural and extramural cronyism; when I tuned in to the one-course tasting menu this week, I almost felt like an eavesdropper at one of their exclusive parties.

 The print journalists, though, are of necessity a bit more circumspect in their self-serving propaganda. Cable chitchat quickly dissolves into the air, whereas print has a way of hanging around forever. This extra care, however, does not apply when print reporters in great numbers appear on the cable shows. (or, as is the case of Maggie Haberman, who works for both CNN and the New York Times, they zig-zag seamlessy between dual employers in order to amplify their own narratives) On TV, the print straight-news journalists seem much freer to let loose with their own analyses and opinions. There is that feeling of security when they're in proximity to members of their own professional class. And there is also that competition in trying to outdo one another with the most sparkling and erudite and insightful group-think.

 Invitations to these shows are predicated upon guests not straying too far from the conventional wisdom, especially as it pertains to Russiagate. To doubt that there was a direct Kremlin-ordered "attack on our democracy/elections" - besides Trump's likely sleazy dealings with Russian oligarchs - is to be never invited back.

The New York Times, the nation's Paper of Record, for the most part couches its own click-vantageous, pretend-contemptuous Trump coverage through the skilled use of slanted language and snide innuendo, rather than through chirpy overblown cable outrage.  A piece by Eileen Sullivan is also typical of a growing practice which treats the cable news and late night comedy shows as news events in and of themselves. Sullivan's article is headlined "Trump Criticizes Mueller, Again, (my bold) As a Former CIA Director Suggests Russia 'May Have Something' On the President."

There is so much meaning crammed into that one little headline. First is the implication that the crusading media-political complex is downright exhausted covering all these ridiculous Trumpian insults. Second is the implication that the former CIA Director - NBC's John Brennan - is speaking as an altruistic former government official and not as a highly-paid corporate pundit. Third is the unproven claim that Russia has Kompromat on Trump. And that leads me to wonder why on earth the former CIA director himself wouldn't know what Russia has or doesn't have. It certainly doesn't speak highly of his spying expertise; all he can do is "suggest" rather than to accuse, in a smarmy effort to appear honorable.

Okay, so now that we've been (mis) lead to believe that Trump blasted Mueller in no uncertain terms like the crazed buffoon that he is, the Times's lede goes all soft and mushy:
  President Trump indirectly (my bold) criticized Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, on Wednesday for the ongoing investigation into Russia’s 2016 campaign meddling, even as a former C.I.A. director said during a morning news show that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia may have compromising information on Mr. Trump.
The Times attempts to assert its own honor by inserting the belated modifier, "indirectly," lest they be accused of editorializing after their initial accusatory headline. The Times also protects John Brennan's honor by failing to mention that he is actually employed, and paid quite handsomely, by the same network which aired his appearance.
After a weekend of attacking Mr. Mueller — against the advice of his own lawyers — Mr. Trump picked up again in early morning tweets when he quoted a Harvard professor who said Mr. Mueller should never have been appointed to be the special counsel to investigate Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election. That investigation has expanded into inquiries into Mr. Trump’s aides and his own business dealings.
“I was opposed to the selection of Mueller to be Special Council,” Mr. Trump tweeted, misspelling the word, “counsel,” as he quoted Alan M. Dershowitz, a Harvard Law professor who has been outspoken in his defense of the president.
It is impossible for the Times to write an article about Trump's tweets without also gleefully pointing out each and every one of his many spelling and grammatical mistakes. What actually surprises me, though, is their pointing out two separate times that Dershowitz is employed by Harvard University, home of the best and the brightest on both sides of the Uniparty. Then again, Dershowitz also appears frequently on Fox News, so maybe this serves as a subtle message to Harvard. I have no way of knowing, because as Allen Drury observed more than half a century ago, these media-political complex characters are almost always talking amongst themselves rather than directly to the reading and viewing public.

The Times continues,
Separately, on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” John O. Brennan, a former C.I.A. director, speculated that the Russians “may have something on him personally,” referring to Mr. Trump.
Mr. Brennan was the C.I.A. director when a salacious dossier surfaced in 2016 that claimed the Russians had compromising information on Mr. Trump. There has been no proof that such material exists, but Mr. Trump’s affection for the Russian leader has raised questions about the nature of their relationship.
Again, there is no mention of Brennan's new professional and monetary association with NBC. For all that New York Times readers are allowed to know, the former CIA director just happened to drop by 30 Rock Center to "speculate" out of the pure goodness of his honorable little heart.

Notice, too, the passive voice employed by Eileen Sullivan when she describes the "salacious dossier." It just happened to "surface" out of thin air one day, all by its lonesome, seemingly without either the direct or indirect orders and financing of the Hillary Clinton campaign. The dossier is not proof of anything, Sullivan allows, but Trump's affection for Putin obviously leads one to the rational conclusion that Trump enjoys the "golden showers" of Russian prostitutes. You'd think that John Brennan, as the nation's former top spy, would know one way or another whether this is true. "High confidence" and speculation among spooks is not evidence. But who cares, when innuendo is such a powerful propaganda weapon when it is aimed at erudite Times readers and not at the deplorable hicks who get sucked in by the schlock Facebook ads and apps, disseminated by Steve Bannon and his Russian troll pals, and paid for by the all-American billionaire Mercers?
On Tuesday, Mr. Trump congratulated Mr. Putin on his re-election and made no mention of the election meddling. Mr. Trump has routinely issued statements about Russia and Mr. Putin that sound at odds with his own advisers and administration actions.
Trump serially lies out of both sides of his pursed little cat anus of a mouth before he serially walks back those lies. And the media always pretend to be shocked out of their minds as they rush to serialize all his lies into their endless listicles and columns. Lies are Trump's currency. They are his instruments of pure power over the media, which can't help bringing attention to them as part of their never-ending serialized spectacular reality show which passes for political discourse these days. His words don't jibe with his actions - doesn't that make him a typical sleazy American politician?
“I think he’s afraid of the president of Russia,” said Mr. Brennan, now retired from government service and a critic of Mr. Trump.
Oh, for Saint Pete's sake: the New York Times just denied Brennan's monetary collusion with NBC for the third straight time in just one short article.

15 comments:

  1. I didn't see anyone checking each ballot before they were stuffed into the box, so who knows if they were actually votes for Putin. If it's so easy to dump a load of ballots into the box, why couldn't opponents' supporter do that by pretending to be stuffing ballots for Putin? Of course it wouldn't make any difference. Putin is actually quite popular there.

    In regard to Trump and the media, if he kissed up to them like all the other Presidents have done, they'd love him.

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  2. I'm copying this from the comments to the last post:

    What if... Putin does have something on Trump? Would that be such a bad thing? What if... the weird poisoning of the former Russian spy in Great Britain was a message to Trump from Putin to start playing ball. Ok, I'm getting my hopes up, but who better to take our global empire down than Trump, under direction from Putin? Who's the greatest threat to We the People, our own deep state criminal class of powerful oligarchs or little old Russia crippled by sanctions?

    There might be a silver lining in this storm cloud of Russia-gate, if only Trump can survive Harem-gate. He needs to quickly start undermining our imperialist world domination under the direction of hero Putin ;-) If anyone can, it's Trump. He just needs to say NO to his Deep State handlers a lot more.

    Trump did call Putin to congratulate him against the order of the Deep State. That's a good sign, comrades!

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  3. Now that I have my tinfoil hat all tuned up, it's time to remind everyone, especially the emotionally overwrought media, of what Facebook was up to in January 2012. It was two years later that we discovered Facebook had conducted a Nazi-like psychological experiment to manipulate emotional mass-contagion in users. The study was published in the June 2014 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and picked up by the media.

    'Experimental Evidence of Massive-Scale Emotional Contagion Through Social Networks'
    http://www.pnas.org/content/111/24/8788.full

    A full year before Facebook conducted their psychological experiment, Julian Assange warned in 2011 that 'Facebook Is a Spy Machine For US Intelligence'.

    https://www.csoonline.com/article/2229148/microsoft-subnet/microsoft-subnet-julian-assange-facebook-is-a-spy-machine-for-us-intelligence.html

    So who commissioned, instigated, or encouraged that Facebook experiment? And has that new tool been weaponized for practical purposes? Our Gov't is now warning us that social media is being weaponized and we must crack down on fake news, beef up domestic propaganda, etc. but when they point fingers at others like the Russians, it's because they're trying to divert attention from their own sinister operations.

    As a twist on turnabout is fair play, would it be so difficult for some social media program to target and emotionally manipulate the media into being the carrier of a emotional contagion campaign? They've long cooperated with Big Brother, as have the big technology and telecommunications companies for illegal activities 'for the good of the country', so social media could target them to spread the dis-ease.

    The fact is, newspapers and tv are limited in their reach and influence compared to Facebook which can reach and influence billions anywhere and everywhere instantly, and all using sophisticated algorithms which mostly eliminate human middlemen. I can imagine someone like Mark Zuckerberg would do it as a personal favor for his friend The Awesome Obama, First CIA President. If not, thug Brennan could always threaten someone with torture to induce cooperation.

    Anyway, we all know that if/when any illegal activity is discovered, it's retroactively made legal by Congress and swept under the rug. I doubt that social media giants like Facebook, Google, et al would worry about it or react differently from their predecessors, AT&T, IBM, etc. They all have a future Get Out Of Jail Card waiting for them, just like the banksters. Plus, as Edward Snowden said, "Google can only look in their own data silo. The government can look in Facebook's data silo, Google's silo, and everyone else's."

    Btw, even Cambridge Analytica has a State Department contract - with the Global Engagement Center!

    https://www.axios.com/cambridge-analytica-may-still-have-an-open-contract-with-th-1521494535-64a045dd-bfe3-4a7a-8439-a54f1ae13860.html

    Social and emotional contagion can be a used as a weapon to 'soften up the battlefield', let's say for something like a coup or regime change, especially a sensitive domestic one requiring subtlety to stay under the radar to ensure 'unity'. The media can already be a force multiplier when they're all on the same page, but add in the power of emotional contagion, and they can become a counter-insurgency tool.

    When American citizens start turning against anti-war activists, black activists, environmentalists, leftists, etc. as being unpatriotic, treasonous, and akin to terrorists, we can be sure something in going on. Is the media only hopelessly agitated to please corporate sponsors? Or by rabid partisanship and hatred for Trump? Or has the media been targeted by social media for emotional contagion because of their ability to amplify and spread it through social media like a resistant superbug infection?

    I'd tell you, but then I'd have to kill you ;-)

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  4. A reasonable reaction to the absurd misbehavior of our press sounds too much like a defense of Trump. I don't want to defend Trump. However, even noticing the sewage of the attacks sounds like a defense.

    An example Karen mentions is the "golden showers" so much talked about. The Steele Dossier did not say that. It said that Trump was present when a couple of hookers peed on the bed that had been used by Obama during his visit. It was an insult to Obama, and the insult is said in the Dossier to have pleased Trump. This is gross behavior, but it is not "golden showers," which has a very specific kinky meaning that they know perfectly well when they say this.

    The attacks are so over the top that they have the effect of defending Trump, with anyone who objects to the abuse. These attacks push our extreme internal divisions. Worse, they leave some observers isolated on the Trump side, out of disgust with the behavior of the attackers.

    Then again, that is part of how Trump got elected in the first place. This is more of the same, worse and worse, but not new.

    We can wonder why they don't want to do what Bernie and others do, actually develop and present alternatives that are much more appealing, and easily shown to be better than the half baked ideas of Trump. Perhaps the problem is donors, who don't want to pay for what Bernie does.

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  5. In re-reading this last post, yes, it did dawn on me that some might interpret it as a defense of Trump besides, or even rather than, a critique of corporate media. As a matter of fact, I have seen similar critiques of the media propaganda on conservative sites. Ross Douthat's latest (excellent, for a change) column is a case in point.

    What is really starting to irk me are the near-constant disclaimers from certain critics of Russiagate to the effect of "Don't get me wrong, please don't misunderstand me, I really do think Donald Trump is the worst thing to happen in the history of humanity, but..."

    I might once have been guilty of this pleading myself - I really forget - but since I do manage to say something critical (often nastily so) of Trump in every anti-Russophobic McCarthyite Democrat piece that I write, why go overboard and pretend to be begging for mercy and understanding from the liberal class? You will never get it from them. Some Clinton and Obama fans, for example, are intolerant of anything except complete obeisance to their idols. Another is the "I voted for Bernie but learned to love Hillary, so why can't you? Otherwise, you're for Trump" type.

    This whole liberal campaign - it is such a constant rerun of the Clinton campaign that it might seamlessly evolve into Round Three for 2020 - reeks of "if you're not for us, you're against us." There is a rampant authoritarianism within the Democratic Party these days. One symptom of this is the rehabilitation - by Democrats - of George W. Bush.

    I don't buy into the red vs. blue, conservative vs liberal "narrative" in any case. "The country is so divided" trope is just another way for the ruling class to divide and conquer us and protect themselves. Unfortunately, it is quite effective.

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  6. Actual voters generally are liberal on some issues and conservative on others. Few people are within the pundit-accepted definition of a consistent liberal or conservative position.

    I recall running statistical breakdowns of issue positions against self identification as liberal or conservative. On most issues, almost anything else was more predictive than self identification.

    Conor Lamb ran as some of this and some of that. That is what voters really are, everywhere. What varies by location is how much of this and that, with the differences being nothing like as extreme as pundit discuss.

    The only meaningful discussion is of specific issues. The problem is that support will re-sort the individual voters on each of several issues, so framing the campaign as "about" one of them becomes critical. What we tend to see is over-simplification instead, to avoid framing it as about any one issue.

    Making sense of this is hard, and explaining it is harder, so those who are supposed to do those things just make something up instead, something that is not real at all, conservative vs liberal.

    What really irks me is that the issue positions important to me are not taken by either candidate, they are all on the other side against me. Hillary was an example of that, "my side" that wasn't. Not to re-run that election, but the choices coming up may not be any better. I don't want to do that all over again.

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  7. Mark,

    Very true. Before my district was gerrymandered into NY 19, the late Maurice Hinchey was elected to term after term, and was widely considered to be the most progressive member of the House. After redistricting, a Republican named Chris Gibson was elected. He was widely considered to be the most liberal Republican in that body. When he ran for re-election and was challenged by the carpetbagging centrist Dem spouse of Facebook billionaire Chris Hughes, I voted for Gibson (an Iraq War vet) based upon his integrity and upon his anti-war and anti-surveillance platform. When Gibson didn't run for re-election, I voted for anti-corruption progressive Democrat Zephyr Teachout, who lost to Wall Street shill John Faso. Right now, there are a whole slew of Dems standing for the primary and I can almost guarantee I will hold my nose and vote Dem - that is just how badly corrupt and oligarch-serving John Faso is. But we'll see.

    Hard to tell the outcome, since the district is a motley mix of progressive, conservative, rural, suburban, etc. just like a lot of places.


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  8. A friend of my wife has been a Pentagon pool reporter for more than a decade and has covered politics going all the way back to the 2000 presidential campaign. His/Her job, literally, is to fly around the world with Mattis and copy down all of his "on the record" statements and regurgitate them in the press like some glorified stenographer. He/She once said to me that American troops are still in Afghanistan at the "request" of the government--which is of course total BS since we INSTALLED that government. How he/she justifies American troop presence in Syria where the government most decidedly does NOT want us is, of course, another matter.

    That's bad enough, but when I asked him/her what he/she thought of the "Fat Leonard" Navy bribery case that has already taken down numerous admirals and has seen the implication of over 100 senior officers (a case a friend of mine who was involved with it as a federal law enforcement agent for DOD called "the largest scandal in Pentagon history") and why the scandal only gets coverage in a few newspapers like the Post and is never featured on the nightly or cable news, he/she said she found the story "boring." He/she said that he/she and most of his/her colleagues have grown "tired" of reading the Post's coverage because it such a downer.

    So here you have a senior inside-the-Beltway "reporter" who believes that a huge scandal involving systemic high level government corruption is practically beneath their notice, yet the cautiously guarded words that drop like turds from our war criminal Defense Secretary's lips should be treated like precious diamonds even though I guarantee that virtually NOBODY outside the Beltway ever bothers to read them or give a damn. Of course, if he/she felt differently, he/she wouldn't remain a Pentagon pool reporter for very long.

    But hey, considering that even Bob Woodward himself eventually became corrupted by the establishment, it isn't surprising.

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  9. Karen, I got Gerrymandered too, so now I'm represented by a Republican attorney who got very rich doing home foreclosure work for banks, using very questionable documents. Bottom feeders don't come much lower, and his behavior in Congress is much the same. He had no trouble raising money. His opponent for the last couple of cycles was a wealthy MD, who was very much on the side of Hillary, not least for opposing any form of health care reform I'd support. I think there are a lot of us, just waiting for someone to vote for.

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  10. As everybody knows, state legislatures redraw congressional districts every ten years. Currently, Republicans control 32 state legislatures, the Democrats 14, and only 4 are split. Since 1978 (and maybe before that) the number of split legislatures has never been so low as it is now. The election of 2016 proved how nicely that lopsidedness worked for Trump, the popular vote be damned (not that I was pulling for Hillary).

    After decades of congressional district lines being redrawn by one or the other revanchist wing of the Duopoly, can't we assume that by now just about every congressional district in the nation has been gerrymandered?

    Zephyr Teachout was just mentioned. A pity she lost in New York's 18th District. She's so noisily anti-corrupt, neither Wall Street nor the DNC has any interest in supporting her. Is there no other congressional district or high office she might run for? Is there no honest billionaire in the land who might fund her next campaign?

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  11. Jay,

    Zephyr Teachout just announced she is joining Cynthia Nixon's class war-centered, primary challenge to Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Most liberal Democrats are scoffing, of course; see, for example, Frank Bruni's latest NY Times column railing about her lack of experience and the "celebritization" of politics. The truth, whether Nixon means what she says it not, is that"wealth inequality" is the overriding issue of our times. This phrase, long verboten in polite establishment Democratic company but making a comeback in the admittedly quixotic Nixon challenge, is making centrists writhe in discomfort. Good!

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  12. Karen, thanks for that tip about Cynthia Nixon backed by Teachout. Since Mario is not around any longer to pin back Andrew's ears, we must look to Nixon to do the job.

    Meanwhile, Mario is probably in conversation with Solomon; they would sadly be comparing their sons Andrew and Absalom.

    Nixon has a website:
    https://cynthiafornewyork.com/
    and I'm about to send her a donation. She's also asking for volunteers.

    Even if she's a political novice and can't possibly win, she begins her campaign with name recognition and elan. As an actress she knows a lot about public speaking. She'll be strong voice talking up real issues to a wide audience over the next six months. It would not be a waste of time to send her a dollar.

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  13. Re what Karl Kolchak said:

    I covered West Point for a local newspaper way back when, so I'm very familiar with the games that the Pentagon plays with our "free" press. When I went to cover a speech by Gen. William Westmoreland, for example, the PR people sat us all in a luxurious bar, the tables inlaid with video games that would not hit the public market for several more years, and plied us with booze. This made us more likely to act as witless stenographers when Westmoreland bragged about Vietnam, and all the cadets roared in approval. Never saw such scary bunch of people in my entire life.

    I also covered the nearby city of Newburgh, a very poor city which in many years tops the list highest per-capita violent crime rate in the state of New York. I felt a lot more comfortable going into allegedly unsafe areas of the city than I ever did going to a U.S.M.A. assignment.

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  14. Anna,

    Love how the media and Democrats are just now noticing that Facebook is a for-profit vampire with no moral scruples whatsoever. When Obama mined their data, it was "savvy." When Trump did it, its criminal and a total invasion of the privacy we sll too freely relinquish to these predators every time we download an app or log on to a social media site.

    But if this phony outrage actually brings down Zuckerberg and that annoying trickle-down fake feminist Sheryl Sandberg, who am I to complain?

    I'm reading a very interesting book at the moment by a couple of Oxford economists, called "Reinventing Capitalism in the Age of Big Data." It'a not only a good basic introduction to Economics and how money works, it makes the Cambridge Analytica "scandal" seem commonplace, sensible and even highly desirable as a business model. People with no money are still extremely valuable to the oligarchs and financial "experts," because we are their free Data who have no choice but to be constantly exposed to an endless flow of data. It dawned on me that there is a very non-altruistic reason our politicians want to introduce broadband into "under-served" and rural areas. Scary and enlightening stuff written quite dispassionatelym given the subject matter, and highly recommended. The writers are Viktor Mayer-Schonberger and Thomas Ramge.

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  15. P.S.

    I was typing up notes on the above-mentioned book for use in a future post, and I accidentally pushed "publish" instead of "save." I didn't notice this for many hours and in the interim, these notes got quite a few "hits" -- I do apologize! (mistakes were made, dontcha know.) Anyway, before I write anything on the Cambridge Analytica affair, I want to do some research. As many readers know by now, I am not a technologically savvy person at all.

    (I often use the blog window for taking notes because the font is way easier on my old eyes than using Word and the like. Usually when I mistakenly punch "publish" the page is a total blank, leading some readers to think I was simply being ironic that day.)

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