CORRECTION

a bit neglected? 6/16

see also whistleblower

SEE MODERATION

NO MERRI

see SIO attack dininfo gov scalp weaponization

see defamation lawsuits fox smartmatic salem 2000 mules

see disbar

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7 25 AN

BESSENT SAYS DEMS BLEW UP DEFICIT IN 2020 cnn bash no ~

FOX RETRACTED ABREGO KILLED AM

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sounds like lawyer mader her

MMA

June 26, 2026, edition of Fox Business' Mornings with Maria Bartiromo

MARIA BARTIROMO (ANCHOR): Meanwhile there's this, Kevin O'Leary appeared as a guest on this program back on May 11 and discussed the ongoing controversy surrounding his planned data center project in Utah. Now, he made certain claims relating to the opponents of that project. Mr. O'Leary has now corrected the record and explained that he has no evidence that the Alliance for a Better Utah, Elevate Strategies, Josh Kanter, Taylor Knuth, or Gabrielle Finlayson are funded by China or the Chinese Communist Party. Fox News Media is likely — likewise aware of no evidence that they are funded by or acting at the direction of or in coordination with Chinese interests in opposing Kevin O'Leary's project. Fox News Media apologizes for the error.

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also relates to free flow of info/transparency

 2/20 added ~ alt fact post-truth

is legislative reform a kind of correction?  church comm reigned in CIA? some capaign finance? frank-dodd?

is brown v bd scotus correction?

hacktivists build tools to make it easier to track gov't and corporate behavior eg exxon secrets or sunlight fdn

This category refers to the general systems theory notion that an organism must be able to forget old or incorrect info in order to adjust its behavior to survive in a changing environment.  Well, ok to remember that we made errors so we do not make them again.  Learning involves amplifying feedback (somehow), but essentially we're taking about remaining in balance, avoiding fringe wacko ideas (tho presumably some times extreme measures are needed and the wackos turn out to be right?).

The press, the check on all other checks, traditionally prided itself on correction, but tabloid that got Boston Bombing wrong doubled down?  NPR/PBS persists, even on seemingly trivial (Jaron said everything in his CClub bio/blurb was inaccurate).

Whistleblowers risk careers after going thru channels to leak info; their track record on treatment is sad.  BO admin going after unprecedented.

  ===

he widely debunked documentary was mentioned in dozens of articles on The Gateway Pundit and pushed by conservative media figures including Steve Bannon and Charlie Kirk

WRITTEN BY AUDREY MCCABE

PUBLISHED 06/05/24 10:51 AM EDT

Right-wing media conglomerate Salem Media has retracted and apologized for Dinesh D’Souza and True the Vote’s conspiracy theory-laden “documentary” 2000 Mules after settling a lawsuit with a Georgia voter falsely accused by the film of committing fraud in the 2020 election.

Before halting distribution of the film and removing it from its platforms, Salem Media provided a platform to widely circulate its election integrity misinformation throughout the right-wing media ecosystem. Salem Media’s Charlie Kirk was featured in the documentary, and a search for the film name on The Gateway Pundit’s website yielded dozens of articles.

In May 2022, filmmaker D’Souza released 2000 Mules in partnership with “election integrity” group True the Vote and Salem Media. The film relies heavily on the use of cellphone geotracking, a faulty approach that reportedly fails to prove claims of ballot trafficking. (D’Souza also published a book version of 2000 Mules, which was recalled by the publisher soon after it hit bookstores and altered to retract certain allegations before its re-release. True the Vote claimed to have “had no participation in” the book.)

The documentary has been repeatedly debunked by law enforcement and the media, but right-wing media heavily promoted the film as supposed evidence of widespread voter fraud aimed at stopping former President Donald Trump from winning the 2020 presidential election.

Mark Andrews, a Georgia man falsely depicted as committing voter fraud in the film, sued D’Souza and his company, Salem Media, True the Vote and its founders Catherine Engelbrecht and Greg Phillips, and the book publisher. In a separate legal proceeding, a Fulton County Superior Court judge ordered True the Vote to provide evidence of voter fraud in Georgia, which the film asserted. True the Vote admitted in court that it did not have evidence substantiating its claims.

Salem Media recently settled in the suit, paying Andrews an undisclosed “significant” amount and issuing a formal apology. The outlet also claimed that it “relied on representations made to us by Dinesh D’Souza and True the Vote.” Engelbrecht claimed in a livestream that Salem retracted 2000 Mules only because of pressure from shareholders and advertisers, and True the Vote posted on X that it “stands by its processes and methodologies” and Salem’s settlement “does not change our [True the Vote’s] position.” D’Souza reposted the statement.

Right-wing media figures and outlets have pushed the film, using it to fuel claims that the 2020 election was stolen

One America News regularly promoted the film around the 2022 midterm elections, devoting 58 hours of airtime to the film between October 15 and November 1. One America News figures also attended the Mar-a-Lago premiere, bizarrely weaved the film into unrelated segments about crime, and called it the “film of the century.” Host Dan Ball stated, “After watching this movie, I will say this: There’s not one doubt in my mind that this election was rigged, period.” [Media Matters, 11/3/22, 5/11/22]

The Daily Signal, The Published Reporter, and several GOP politicians ran ads on Meta promoting 2000 Mules, further spreading the film’s false claims. The Daily Signal’s ad features a quote from Phillips claiming that there was an “organized effort to subvert” the 2020 election. Meta prohibits ads that have been debunked by third-party fact-checkers, but Media Matters found 36 ads promoting the film. [Media Matters, 5/6/22]

Right-wing podcaster and former Trump advisor Steve Bannon invited Engelbrecht and Phillips onto War Room to promote the film, even after the group failed to provide evidence before the court. Bannon claimed that True the Vote was being targeted in an “organized media hit.” [Media Matters, 2/20/24]

Salem Media host and Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk appeared in 2000 Mules and brought D’Souza, Engelbrecht, and Phillips on his show to promote the film. Kirk also partnered with D’Souza to host exclusive showings of the documentary. [Media Matters, 5/4/22; CharlieKirk.com, 4/9/22]

A search for “2000 Mules” on The Gateway Pundit’s website returned dozens of articles. The outlet claimed that the film “irrefutably confirms the widespread belief that Democrats stole the election in 2020.” [The Gateway Pundit, 6/2/22]

Jeffrey Clark, whom Trump attempted to make attorney general, has repeatedly praised 2000 Mules on X (formerly known as Twitter) and claimed that it revealed a “massive multi-State operation.” He promoted a Gateway Pundit article on Kirk’s interview with Engelbrecht and Phillips. [Media Matters, 6/23/22]

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fox fail hannity corrects why? thom suggests oann smartmatic suit, e jean carroll defam loss etc

thom 3 an 2 24

— Fascism Fear, Fear, Fear and Even More Fear Alert! While Sean Hannity was interviewing Curtis Sliwa — who was on a midtown street in New York City — on Hannity’s Fox “News” show, there was a kerfuffle off-camera. Turns out a group of the “Guardian Angels” thought they’d caught an “illegal” walking by and tackled him to the ground and beat him up, if press reports are accurate. Sliwa bragged to Hannity:

“The Guardian Angels spotted him, stopped him, he resisted, and let’s just say we gave him a little pain compliance. His mother back in Venezuela felt the vibrations. He’s sucking concrete, the cops scraped him off the asphalt, he's on his way to jail, but they’ll cut him loose. We gotta take 42nd Street back, Sean. These illegals think they own this street, they think they rule the night. This is our country, if they can't abide by the rules, then we’re gonna kick ’em back from where they came.”

Later, the press reported, it turned out the guy wasn’t an “illegal” and wasn’t a criminal: he was just a Hispanic guy walking down the street minding his own business. Did I mention “bullies and thugs”?...

trump consistently losing every legal battle 12 22

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CNN host debunks Mike Johnson’s false hundreds of 'known terrorists' claim in real time - Alternet.org

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aha yikes correction in soc media no longer POSSIBLE?!

an ah 12 22

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top White House medical adviser to President Joe Biden and long-time director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), has been serving in the United States’ federal government since the late 1960s. Fauci, who will be celebrating his 82nd birthday on December 24, 2022, has been in the United States’ federal government since the late 1960s. And he has never had a problem serving under conservative Republican presidents, including Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush.

The younger President Bush, in fact, had nothing but praise for Fauci when he presented him with the 2008 Presidential Medal of Freedom.

But during the COVID-19 pandemic, Fauci became a major target of the MAGA movement. Countless MAGA culture warriors, consumed with identity politics, have turned hating Fauci into a popular pastime. Tesla CEO and new Twitter own Elon Musk, who supported President Joe Biden in 2020 but often sounds very MAGA in his rhetoric, bashed the retiring NIAID director when, on December 11, he tweeted, “My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci.” [// desantis BS]

READ MORE: Elon Musk dethroned as richest man in the world: report

Many Twitter users have been calling Musk out for that tweet. But liberal Washington Post opinion columnist Greg Sargent, in his December 13 column, stresses that Musk is unfazed by such critics because his motivation is appealing to the “right-wing information ecosystem.”

“By now, it should be obvious that for large swaths of the right-wing media ecosystem, the Triggering of the Libs has become an end in itself,” Sargent explains. “In the brutal competition of the so-called attention economy, provoking large-scale outrage and loathing is not an incidental feature of making controversial arguments. It has become a key marker of success.”

Sargent continues, “Over the weekend, Elon Musk called for the prosecution of Anthony S. Fauci, the leading infectious-disease expert in the Biden Administration. 'My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci,' Musk tweeted, mocking transgender people for good measure. Musk then endorsed a complicated right-wing conspiracy theory about Fauci’s role in the COVID-19 pandemic. Democrats and other Musk critics reacted with an explosion of outrage.”

Twitter users who vigorously defended Fauci against Musk ranged from Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota to former CIA Director John O. Brennan. The latter told Musk, “Dr. Fauci is a national hero who will be remembered for generations to come for his innate goodness & many contributions to public health. Despite your business success, you will be remembered most for fueling public hate & divisions. You may have money, but you have no class.”

READ MORE:How Elon Musk is positioning himself as a 'hard-right culture warrior': journalists

Sargent stresses, however, that while Brennan and Klobuchar’s defenses of Fauci are “reasonable,” they also “seem fundamentally out of touch with basic realities of how right-wing information warfare really works.”

“This sort of info-warring, at bottom, is what characterizes Musk’s transformation into the world’s richest right-wing troll,” Sargent explains. “Tons of pixels have been wasted on efforts to pin down Musk’s true beliefs, but whatever they are, we can say right now that he’s consciously exploiting fundamental features of the right-wing information ecosystem.”

Sargent adds that offending liberals is the whole point of an “info-warring” tweet like Musk’s December 11 attack on Fauci.

“It’s understandable that Musk’s critics are trying shaming and outrage, in that this could further drive advertisers away from Twitter,” Sargent writes. “But paradoxically, it might also help Musk…. In much of the right-wing info-ecosystem, liberal outrage is a sign of an attack’s effectiveness. It can be only confirmation that the Libs Were Owned. Shaming is useless in such an environment, and in some ways can backfire.”

READ MORE:Elon Musk’s epic bumbling is a daily reminder that America is not a meritocracy

1. ### :{How the right ran with a Fox hoax about a Marine veteran’s burial:(style="box-sizing:border-box;background-color:#ffffff;;fill:#ffffff;"):}:

08/28/23

...fox News published a false accusation that the Pentagon forced a Gold Star family to pay $60,000 for the transportation of remains

• As U.S. and NATO forces withdrew from Afghanistan in August 2021, and conducted massive airlift operations to evacuate civilians fleeing the Taliban, at least one suicide bomber killed 13 American service members and as many as 170 civilians outside at crowded entry gate at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul. One of the American Marines killed, Sgt. Nicole Gee, had previously been photographed tending to a wounded baby at the airport and had spoken positively of her role in the evacuation effort. Her remains arrived in her hometown of Roseville, California, on August 29 of that year, and were later transported to Arlington National Cemetery and laid to rest.

• • On July 25, a Fox News Digital article claimed that Gee’s family was “forced to pay to ship” the body of a slain Marine. In the article — which has since been deleted from Fox’s website — Rep. Cory Mills (R-FL) told Fox that he was “enraged to learn that the Department of Defense had placed a heavy financial burden” on Gee’s family, which secured the $60,000 transportation fee from a nonprofit organization. Fox News Digital, [7/25/23 via Internet Archive]
  • Mills linked to the Fox article in a social media post and wrote, “At no time should our Gold Star families be financially responsible for burying their loved ones and American heroes.” Twitter/X, [7/25/23]
• ## Military-focused news outlets were quick to refute the claims in the Fox story
• News outlets focused on the military, veterans, and service families were the first to speak with Gee’s family directly about the false Fox story, and quickly pushed back on Mill’s false claims. Their reporting made clear that Fox neglected to fact-check or substantiate his statements.

• • Statements from the Marine’s family first reported by the military-focused publication Task & Purpose asserted that the family never contacted the Department of Defense about financing the relocation, nor received any bills. Task & Purpose contacted Gee's family and was first to report their statements refuting Fox’s story. The statements were later confirmed by The Sacramento Bee, the family's hometown newspaper. The family stated that the flight was organized and “donated” by a non-profit organization and a Pentagon representative confirmed that the military had “no record of any incurred charges or any pending requests for reimbursement associated with the transportation of Sgt. Gee’s remains to Arlington National Cemetery.” Task & Purpose, [7/26/23]
  • The Marine Corps Times repeated the family statements collected by Task & Purpose and further clarified that there was “no record of any such cost for the family” over the transportation and burial of the remains. Its coverage specifically called out both Mills and Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-CA) for attacking the Department of Defense over the nonsense claims. Marine Corps Times, [7/27/23]
• ## Fox quietly scrubbed the false report and eventually apologized to the family
• After pressure from the Marine Corps, and nearly a month of back and forth between representatives from the network and the Department of Defense, Fox issued an apology to the fallen Marine’s family for the false story – but never published a correction.

• • Fox News, according to Military.com, edited the article’s headline and content “without noting a correction,” and later removed the entire article containing Mills’ original false claims. Military.com further reported that after Gee’s family said they were never billed by the Pentagon and refuted Mills’ false claims, he issued a statement on July 27 claiming that the family was “confused in their time of grief” and continued to attack the Department of Defense. Military.com, [7/28/23]
  • Military.com also detailed the Marine Corps’ month-long attempt to convince Fox to retract and correct its “false” story. According to Military.com, a spokesperson for the Marine Corps had requested that Fox News apologize directly to the family and insisted that Fox fully correct its false story. Maj. James Stenger wrote in an email to Fox after it changed its article, “This headline correction is still misleading and your story is still false.” He also wrote that Fox was “using the grief of a family member of a fallen Marine to score cheap clickbait points.” Military.com, [8/23/23; The Washington Post, 8/27/23]
  • On August 26, CNN reported that Fox News had finally apologized to Gee’s family, with a network spokesperson asserting that the false story had been “addressed internally.” Although Fox had scrubbed the article from its site at least a month prior, there has been no formal retraction or correction issued. Fox, in a statement, said, “We sincerely apologize to the Gee family” and said its fake story was “now unpublished.” CNN, [8/26/23]
• ## Right-wing media ran with Fox’s story before it was deleted
• Although searches of the SnapStream video database showed that Fox News never aired this false story on its cable programs, many other right-wing media outlets picked up the story and used it to attack the Biden administration. This included conservative social media figures, right-wing blogs, and Fox competitors Newsmax and One America News. Right-wing media often used the story as a vehicle to pursue their own petty criticisms of the Biden administration’s policies, including attacking health care for transgender military personnel, criticizing military aid to Ukraine to defend itself against the ongoing Russian invasion, and objecting to reimbursement for military personnel travel costs for abortion care.

• • Chronicles Magazine editor Pedro L. Gonzalez: “The family of Marine Corps Sgt. Nicole L. Gee, killed by a suicide bomber in Afghanistan, was forced to come up with $60,000 to transport Gee’s remains to Arlington National Cemetery because the Pentagon wouldn’t pay for it.” Twitter/X, [7/25/23]
  • Talk radio host Dana Loesch: “One of the 13 Gold Star families who lost their daughter in Afghanistan was forced to pay to ship her body back — until nonprofit stepped in to pay $60,000 to move Marine Corps Sgt Nicole Gee's remains to Arlington National Cemetery.” Twitter/X, [7/25/23]
  • The Right Scoop: “HORRIBLE: Biden Pentagon FORCED Gold Star family to pay to ship fallen Marine killed in Afghan withdrawal to Arlington.” The article added: “What a freaking slap in the face!” The Right Scoop, [7/25/23]
  • The anti-LGBTQ account Libs of TikTok posted: “The Biden admin is funding drag shows in Equador but refused to pay to bring a dead Marine’s body home.” Twitter/X, [7/26/23]
  • Former Fox producer Kyle Becker: “NEW: The military community is furious at the Biden administration upon discovering a Gold Star Family was forced to bear the cost of transporting its slain daughter's remains after she was killed serving her country in Afghanistan.” Twitter/X, [7/26/23]
  • Newsmax host Chris Salcedo: “The family of a fallen service member killed during Biden's disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal says they were forced to pay thousands of dollars to move the body of their loved one to their final resting place.” Salcedo concluded, “Another sign of how far our government has fallen.” Newsmax, *The Chris Salcedo Show*, [7/26/23]
  • Newsmax host Carl Higbie introduced a segment pushing the fake story, saying, “This one’s actually near and dear to me as a veteran.” Higbie said that the fake story that Gee’s family “was forced to pay 60 grand” to bury her in Arlington National Cemetery “will permanently tarnish the reputation of our Defense Department” and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Newsmax’s Dick Morris joined in the outrage. Newsmax, *Carl Higbie Frontline*, [7/26/23]
  • OAN host Dan Ball reported the “disturbing details” that Gee’s family “had to pay to have her remains moved,” and applauded Mills “for finding this out, for bringing this to the nation’s attention.” Ball lamented that legitimate news organizations weren’t covering the story at the time, linked the false story to a decline in American patriotism, and interviewed a Republican congressional candidate about the fake story. The candidate used the false story to rant against medical care for transgender military personnel. OAN, *Real America with Dan Ball*, [7/26/23]
  • Talk radio host Lars Larson: “Joe Biden is now giving billions for Ukraine but nothing for a vet who died protecting our nation?” On his radio show, Larson repeated the lie that Gee’s family “was denied the usual support by the Pentagon for transportation of her remains to her final resting place in Arlington.” Larson added, “This is absolutely crazy,” and claimed that the Biden administration is undercutting and dishonoring military personnel. Alpha Media, *The Lars Larson Show*, [7/26/23]
  • Townhall: “Family of Marine killed in Afghanistan forced to pay $60,000 bill thanks to Biden Pentagon policy change.” Townhall, [7/26/23]
  • The Western Journal: “Family of Marine killed in Afghanistan stuck with $60,000 bill after Pentagon policy change.” The Western Journal, [7/26/23]
  • Gateway Pundit: “As Joe Biden slept: Family of slain Marine at Kabul airport was forced to fundraise $60,000 to move daughter’s remains to Arlington Cemetery.” Gateway Pundit, [7/26/23]
  • Townhall: “Biden cut a massive check to Ukraine after forcing a family to pay $60,000 to move soldier’s remains.” Townhall, [7/27/23]
  • The Federalist: “For the Pentagon, subsidizing abortions takes priority over transporting service members to their final resting place.” The Federalist, [7/27/23]
  • Salcedo returned to the fake story to discuss a lack of veterans benefits with a guest. Introducing the author of a book about veterans benefits, Salcedo asked, “Is this how far our elected leaders and our government have fallen?” Newsmax, *The Chris Salcedo Show*, [7/28/23]
• ## Numerous Republican lawmakers and officials also promoted the fake story
• Like many of the right-wing media outlets that shared the false story, Republican lawmakers used it to air their grievances about the provision of health care to military personnel, the administration’s immigration policy, and military aid to Ukraine.

• • Rep. Mark Green (R-TN): “So we are paying to fly illegal immigrants to the destination of their choice but we can’t fly a hero’s body home? This administration is totally lost.” Twitter/X, [7/25/23]
  • Rep. Eli Crane (R-AZ): “Biden’s Pentagon is eager to fund abortion travel, genital mutilations & a proxy war in Europe. But when a Marine was killed during the Admin’s botched Afghanistan withdrawal, her family was forced to pay to move her body. Despicable.” Twitter/X, [7/25/23]
  • Florida GOP Chairman Christian Ziegler: “Really great work by Florida Congressman @CoryMillsFL⁩ on this!” Twitter/X, [7/25/23]
  • Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL): “The Pentagon is providing taxpayer funding for elective abortions, but not to transport our fallen heroes to their final resting place. This just shows how extreme the Pentagon’s unprecedented new abortion policy really is.” Twitter/X, [7/26/23]
  • Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL): “This is sickening. Thank you to Honoring Our Fallen, a group that stepped up amid the Biden Administration’s absence.” Twitter/X, [7/26/23]
  • Rep. Burgess Owens (R-UT): “Under Biden's new Pentagon policy, a Gold Star Family was left to pay to transport and bury their loved one at Arlington National Cemetery. Absolutely despicable.” Twitter/X, [7/26/23]
  • Rep. Rich McCormick (R-GA): “Unacceptable. Congress cannot allow this to happen again.” Twitter/X, [7/26/23]
  • Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-CA): “Sergeant Nicole Gee is an American hero who lost her life in the Afghanistan withdrawal. It is unfathomable that the Pentagon would decline to cover the cost of transporting her to her final resting place at Arlington National Cemetery.” The letter that Kiley attached to his social media post was cited by Sacramento media outlets, which mistakenly pushed the false story. Twitter/X, [7/26/23]
• ## Fox and related media outlets previously spread a hoax that veterans were kicked out of housing in New York
• Fox’s creation of this fake story near the second anniversary of the Afghanistan withdrawal echoes another bogus story in which the New York Post — which, like Fox News, is a Murdoch media property — falsely reported that homeless veterans were kicked out of hotels to make room for asylum-seekers. Fox widely covered that hoax before airing multiple similar retractions within days. Although multiple Fox programs aired retractions, some others continued to promote the fake story as genuine even after Mid Hudson News, a local news outlet, had completely debunked it.

mma 12 22

wonder why no longer richest bastard

Supporters of the QAnon conspiracy theory have celebrated Twitter owner Elon Musk tweeting a phrase that has been regularly invoked in the community, taking it as evidence that he supposedly supports the conspiracy theory in some manner.

On December 12, Musk tweeted, “Follow” next to a rabbit emoji. The wording with the emoji would seem to be referring to the phrase “follow the white rabbit,” a reference to the classic fantasy novel Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, which was repopularized byThe Matrixfilm franchise and subsequently adopted as an online rallying cry in the early days of the QAnon movement. The conspiracy theory’s central figure, “Q”, repeatedly referenced the “white rabbit” and the story directly in posts.

QAnon figures, who were already primed to believe that Musk was an ally, hyped Musk’s “clear Q reference” as some kind of green light, along with a follow-up tweet from Musk in response to a scene in The Matrixabout choosing between taking a blue pill and a red pill (which has been embraced in the far-right as so-called “red-pilling,” referring to a process by with individuals come to support far-right ideas). Adherents to the QAnon conspiracy theory claimed Musk has been “keeping with the Q Comms” and was “on pace to start posting Q drops to millions of normies,” with some believing the tweet may already be referring to a Q post

[twts]

the QAnon community’s excitement for Musk’s tweet comes asMusk has pushed claims of child traffickingon Twitter and blamed Twitter’s leadership, including targeting Twitter’s former head of trust and safety, who was forced to flee his home due to threats. It also comes as more QAnon accounts have come back or at least attempted to come back to Twitter in the midst of Musk taking over the platform.

an 7 22

Republican outrage was described as a “small political side circus,” after U.S. Rep. David Cicilline (D-RI) succeeded in having several fact-checking articles exposing Republicans’ false claims made part of the Congressional Record.

The articles all debunked the false and baseless claims conservatives and the far right have been making for nearly a year, that **Attorney General Merrick Garland** called parents speaking at school boards “domestic terrorists,” and was investigating them.

Cicilline first tried to read the articles into the record, but Republicans immediately objected.

The Democrat from Rhode Island appeared genuinely surprised that the Judiciary Committee Republicans would object to the very basic and standard procedure. He was forced to describe the articles to have them included in the official record – something the Republicans also caused a commotion over.

Referring to **Congressman Jim Jordan** (R-OH), Rep. Cicilline said that “the ranking member made reference to a Department of Justice whistleblower memo and grossly mischaracterized its content. So I’d ask unanimous consent that I’d be permitted to read the memo into the record.”

Republicans objected.

“You object to reading into the record the memo?” Cicilline, shocked, asked. “Then I ask unanimous consent that the document that the Republicans were afraid to have be read aloud be introduced into the record.”

He read the titles into the record (NCRM has linked to those titles online below.)

“No, the federal government isn’t using the Patriot Act to treat parents like domestic terrorists,” which refutes a claim Rep. Steve Chabot (R-OH) made last year in October during another Judiciary Committee hearing.

“McCarthy’s false claims that Garland called parents ‘terrorists’” was the title of another article made part of the record.

“Attorney General never called concerned parents ‘domestic terrorists’” was yet another article.

“Kevin McCarthy keeps repeating false claim that attorney general called parents terrorists for wanting to attend school board meetings,” was the final article.

Cicilline then asked “unanimous consent” that Republicans “read these documents and stop making false claims,” to which the Chair responded, “Good luck with that.”

Republicans were outraged.

“Point of order!” yelled one.

“The gentleman just impugned our integrity!” Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) decried.“I would demand that his words be taken down. He is not allowed under the rules to impugn false statements by this side.”

Gohmert literally pointed his finger at Cicilline as he yelled.

“And as far as Politifact, and some of those, they couldn’t find the truth with both hands,” Gohmert, making what would likely be a “pants on fire claim,” also charged.

The Jim Jordan Louie-Gohmert part of the GOP caucus did not appear to have the full support of their fellow members.

U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, a far-right Republican of Texas, held his head in his hand during part of the outbreak, and later ignored it by using his cell phone. U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky was laughing toward the end.

Watch below or at this link.

aha: used to be bad corps that SLAPPed good guys press, now tech corps big enough to make bad corps behave?

proof of benefit?

an 5 22

sixteen months into Joe Biden’s presidency, far-right pundit and conspiracy theorist Dinesh D’Souza continues to shamelessly promote theBig Lieand falsely claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from former President Donald Trump — a claim that the 61-year-old D’Souza makes in his new documentary “2000 Mules.” Journalist Anthony L. Fisher critiques “2000 Mules” in a scathing op-ed published by the Daily Beast on May 19, arguing that D’Souza’s documentary is so sloppy and badly done that even Fox News and Newsmax have ignored it.

“The new documentary ‘2000 Mules,’ a Dinesh D’Souza joint,is barely more credible than your average rando conspiracy theory video on YouTube, but its production values attach to it a superficial seriousness,” Fisher explains. “The film’s intended audience will see a rational ‘just asking questions’ kinda guy, D’Souza, talking with some ideological allies — like Charlie Kirk, Dennis Prager, Sebastian Gorka and Larry Elder — who are merely concerned about voter integrity in the America they love.”

Fisher continues, “But the bulk of the film consists of D’Souza’s highly dramatized explainer sessions with a couple of technological ‘experts,’ also credited as executive producers, whose claims that they’ve used geotracking data to uncover thousands of vote-harvesting mules fall apart under the barest of scrutiny. Surveillance footage of people taking selfies after dropping their votes in dropboxes is presented as ‘A-ha!’ evidence — while ignoring the fact that people taking voter selfies was a mundanely common thing to do in 2020, and for quite a few years prior.”

According to Fisher, “2000 Mules” suffers from “relentless repetition of innuendo” and “almost no verifiable facts.”D’Souza, Fisher notes, complains about Republicans who want to move on from the 2020 election and slams them as cowards.

“D’Souza’s whining extends beyond the film itself, and into coverage of the film,” Fisher observes. “Or in the case of Fox News and Newsmax, the lack of coverage around ‘2000 Mules’ — likely because both networks have already been sued for pushing potentially slanderous Big Lie accusations against voting technology companies. D’Souza’s white knight, Donald Trump, came to the film’s defense when he slammed Fox for ignoring ‘the greatest & most impactful documentary of our time.’But even a Trump-supporting right-wing firebreather like Ben Shapiro can’t bring himself to say D’Souza made a persuasive case with ‘2000 Mules,’ because the film’s central thesis simply isn’t backed by any supporting evidence— much less an overwhelming amount of verifiable, unimpeachable data.”

Someone who doesn’t already buy into the Big Lie, Fisher stresses, won’t change their mind because of “2000 Mules.”

“The film isn’t meant to persuade anyone, it’s meant to reinforce the already passionate certainty in people who believe in something that simply does not exist,” Fisher writes. “It is a vile piece of agitprop, pushing a falsehood that could very well tear our country apart. It’s also a very stupid movie, packaged as smart, fearless muckraking. In a sense, it’s a 90-minute safe space for MAGA snowflakes who can’t accept the fact that their hero is a loser.”

nice! vs WSJ nondenial denial?

WT TOP STORIES

• Corrected: The great big, really huge lie about the 10-year-old abortion victim
• Correction: An opinion column questioning the authenticity of reports of a 10-year-old girl crossing state lines to get an abortion in the wake of the Roe v. Wade ruling was briefly published online Wednesday before an Ohio man was charged with rape. The column has been removed from The Washington Times‘ website.

an 7 22

Indiana's Republican Attorney General Todd Rokita told Fox News anchor Jesse Watters on Wednesday evening that he intends to open a criminal investigation into the provider who performed an abortion on a 10-year-old rape victim from Ohio that had to travel to The Hoosier State to obtain the procedure.

The girl was 45 days along and unable to terminate the forced pregnancy because The Buckeye State banned most abortions past six weeks – with no exceptions for rape or incest – immediately following the United States Supreme Court's right-wing majority decision retracting the constitutional right to abortion in its reversal of Roe versus Wade on June 24th.

Indiana allows abortions up until the 13th week as long as mandated conditions are met. Its rules are likely to tighten, however, when state lawmakers convene in an emergency session on July 25th to discuss post-*Roe*policy plans.

READ MORE: 'A fanciful tale'? Ohio rape suspect arrested after Republicans cast doubt on 10-year-old girl's story

In Ohio, the restrictions are predicated on what legislators and anti-choice activists claim is the detection of a heartbeat. But that contention is not supported by empirical medical data.As an April 17th NBC News report noted, embryos have no structured heart at six weeks. Instead, there is "a tube that generates sporadic electrical impulses that eventually coordinate into rhythmic pulses."

Live Science also explained in detail last September that "after the detection of the flutter at six weeks, the heart muscle continues to develop over the next four to six weeks, undergoing the folding and bending that needs to happen for the heart to take its final shape."

On Tuesday, a 27-year-old suspect was taken into custody and confessed to twice assaulting the child. The arrest occurred while numerous Ohio Republicans – including Governor Mike DeWine, Attorney General Dave Yost, and Congressman Jim Jordan – were publicly suggesting that the story was a fabrication. The Wall Street JournalEditorial Board called the account "a fanciful tale." None of them have issued a formal apology in light of the accused rapist's capture.

Incidentally, Yost had expressed his doubts on Monday's Jesse Watters Primetime.During Wednesday's broadcast, Rokita blamed President Joe Biden's immigration policies for the crime despite the alleged perpetrator having lived in Columbus, Ohio for seven years.

READ MORE: [Kevin McCarthy cites disputed fentanyl overdose report to push anti-immigration rhetoric

"I shouldn't be here. I mean, first of all, this is an illegal immigration issue because likely of Biden's lawlessness at the border and everything going on down there. That's why Indiana as a non-border state has actually filed several independent lawsuits on that," Rokita said.

While justice for the victim may be served in an Ohio courtroom, Rokita is taking a much different approach in neighboring Indiana.

"Then we have the rape, and then we have this abortion activist acting as a doctor with a history of failing to report," he continued as Fox displayed a picture of the doctor who aided the underaged victim. "So we're gathering the information, we're gathering the evidence as we speak, and we're gonna fight this to the end, including looking at her licensure. If she failed to report in Indiana, it's a crime to not report, to intentionally not report."

Next, Rokita fired off several conspiracy theories.

READ MORE: House Republican asks if women give birth to turtles or tacos

**"This is a horrible, horrible scene caused by Marxists and socialists and those in the White House who want lawlessness at the border. And then this girl was politicized – politicized – for the gain of killing more babies, alright? That was the goal,**" Rokita declared. "And this abortion **activist**is out there front and center. The**lame stream media – the fake news** – is right behind it and unfortunately in Indiana, the**paper of record is fake news** and they were right there jumping in on all this thinking that it was gonna be great for their abortionist movement when this girl has been so brutalized."

Watch below or at this link.

====

aha: doh press suppression (and presumably all the OFFENSIVE suppressions damage quality and quantity of info flow, thus impedes democracy (vs corruption and fascism)

aha: wapo and NYT are papers of record, nat'l institutional memory? ~ memory hole revisionist alt fact Earth2?

apparently not Joe and Greta's fault?!:

no lnx twt

These 5 ‘deeply malevolent’ things that Trump did to hurt Ukraine must not be forgotten: journalist

Alex Henderson March 01, 2022

With Ukraine now being invaded by Russian troops on orders from President Vladimir Putin, MAGA messaging on the crisis has ranged from praising Putin to blaming President Joe Biden for the crisis. One of the most ludicrous MAGA talking points is that Putin wouldn’t have invaded Ukraine if Trump were still president.But liberal Washington Post opinion writer Greg Sargent, in a scathing column/listicle published on March 1, stresses that the things Trump did to hurt Ukraine and President Volodymyr Zelensky when he was president must not be forgotten.

“With the Russian invasion of Ukraine getting more horrific,” Sargent writes, “Donald Trump and his allies are frantically erasing the truth about Trump’s relations with Ukraine. Trump absurdly claims that as president, he stood strong behind Ukraine and NATO, even as his spinners comically downplay his corrupt and deeply malevolent betrayal of our ally.”

Sargent continues, “The obvious rejoinder to this spin is that Trump got impeached for withholding military aid to strong-arm Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky into manufacturing propaganda to help Trump’s reelection. This came even as Zelensky pleaded for help against Russian aggression, which the world is now witnessing unfold in all its horror.”

The columnist notes that when Trump was president, he repeatedly “aligned our interests with those of Russian President Vladimir Putin and against those of Ukraine, NATO and the West.” And Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman agrees. Vindman, who testified during House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry against Trump in November 2019, told Sargent, “Trump acted against U.S. interests with the consequence of aiding Russian interests.”

Sargent goes on to list and describe five examples of Trump doing things to hurt Ukraine. Trump, Sargent recalls: (1) “spread propaganda about Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election,” (2) “ousted the well-regarded U.S. ambassador to Ukraine,” Marie Yovanovitch, (3) “froze military assistance to Ukraine,” (4) “withheld a White House meeting from Zelensky,” and (5) “turned Ukraine policy over to (Rudy) Giuliani.”

“All this has important forward-looking implications, now that Trump may run for president again,” Sargent explains. “As president in 2025, he’d be stewarding relations with Russia, Ukraine and NATO, but after this war has unfolded. Right now, we’re seeing extraordinary unity among the United States and its allies as it imposes harsh sanctions on Russia and otherwise tries to dissuade Putin’s invasion. Trump would almost surely rupture that.”

Vindman, during his interview with Sargent, warned that it will be great for Putin if Trump becomes president again.

“With Trump as president in 2025,” Vindman told Sargent, “we’re quite likely looking at a world in which Russia may have achieved its objectives and folded Ukraine back into its sphere of influence.”

aha smartmatic lawsuits made fox and oann correct BS?!

https://www.alternet.org/2021/11/election-official-sues-trump-and-giuliani/

defamation?

==

1 22 an

[media crit]

Donald Trump went into the 2020 election with some of the worst approval ratings on record for a sitting president. He made virtually no effort to appeal to those who didn’t vote for him. How was he able to remain standing, and how did he even potentially have a chance at a second term even if he lost the popular vote? One big reason is that he and his acolytes had convinced their base that the media can’t be trusted.

As we know by now, whenever the media aired even mildly critical coverage of Trump or those who were supposedly helping him make America great again, the response on the right was some variation of “(noun) (verb) fake news!” Indeed, it’s almost an article of faith among the Republican base that the media can’t be trusted.

If your news diet consists of the likes of Fox News, Newsmax, right-wing social media, and Christian conservative outlets, you probably think that when the mainstream media isn’t making things up, it’s crossing lines that should never be crossed in order. But there’s one problem—with few exceptions, it’s right-wing media that engages in that very behavior. And while some of those elements are finally answering for the worst of their sins, others are long overdue for a dose of accountability.

Contrary to what Trump and his diehards would have us think, whenever mainstream media outlets make a mistake, those mistakes are usually corrected fairly quickly once caught.A case in point was a 2017 editorial in *The New York Times* that held 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin partly responsible for a grisly 2011 mass shooting in Tucson, Arizona. The Old Grey Lady’s editorial board claimed that just days before the shooting, Palin’s political action committee circulated a map that placed stylized crosshairs on the districts of 19 Democratic House members. The implication was clear—that map was a big reason why one of those lawmakers, then-Rep. Gabby Giffords of Arizona, nearly died that day.

That claim was slammed on all sides of the aisle, prompting the Times to partly retract the editorial within five hours of it going online. All of the inaccurate information was retracted within two days.Despite this, Palin sued the Times for defamation. As near as can be determined, Palin is suing because she didn’t just want the Times to retract, but to grovel. The suit was due to go to trial in late January, but was pushed back to early February after the rabidly anti-vaccine Palin caught COVID-19.

Palin faces tough sledding under current precedent for libel and defamation suits. As a public figure, she would have to prove that when the editorial board greenlighted the initial version of the editorial, it did so acting with actual malice. That is, Palin would have to convince a jury that the editorial board either knew the story was false or published it with reckless disregard for whether it was true or false. Remember, the statements at issue were retracted in almost no time at all in modern media terms. Her onlychance of winning is to take this case all the way to the Supreme Court in hopes of making it easier for public figures to win libel suits.

As it currently stands, Palin’s suit betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of how media outlets with actual standards work. Indeed, the Times’ quick retraction stands in marked contrast to the behavior of celebrity gossip blog Gawker. In March 2016, Gawker was effectively forced out of business when it was ordered tocough up $140 million in damages to pro wrestler Hulk Hogan for posting a clip of a sex tape of Hogan. While its sister sites (such as sports culture blog Deadspin, tech blog Gizmodo, and feminist blog Jezebel) were sold to Univision at a bankruptcy auction, Gawker itself wasshut down that August. Ultimately, Gawker settled with Hogan for $31 million that November.

A number of observers slammed the verdict for itspotential chilling effect on freedom of the press, especially after billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thielrevealed that he had bankrolled the suit. Thiel openly admitted that he wanted to punish Gawker after its now-defunct tech gossip sister, Valleywag, outed him as gay in 2007. Indeed, in a post-mortem about Gawker on its last day of business, NPR media reporter David Folkenflikobserved that Thiel’s involvement in Hogan’s suit against Gawker portended “ugly implications for press freedom in light of adversaries with nearly infinite resources.”

At its peak in 2015, Gawker hadover 23 million visits per month, making it one of the most visited sites in the world. With that level of popularity, it’s only fair to wonder—why was no one willing to ride to Gawker’s rescue? Granted, potential buyers might have beenskittish about having to deal with the massive legal headache of a lawsuit bankrolled by a billionaire. But surely someone with the wherewithal to withstand Thiel’s resources would have rescued Gawker solely on the principle of defending freedom of the press, right?

By then, however, Gawker had lost a lot of goodwill as a result of two instances where its disregard for standards dating back to the days of typewriters and leaflets was exposed for all to see. In 2015, Gawker ran an article that claimed Conde Nast Chief Financial Officer David Geithner, the brother of President Obama’s Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, was being extorted by a gay porn star and male escort. As the story goes, when Geithner reneged on a deal to meet up with the porn star on a trip to Chicago, the escort went to Gawker and offered to tell all. He supplied copies of text exchanges between himself and Geithner and a selfie that Geithner supposedly sent him.

When the story went live, the criticism came inhard,fast, and fromall directions.Most of the detractors argued that it served no public interest to even imply that Geithner was gay. For example, the University of Minnesota’s Jane Kirtley, a media law expert, told The Daily Beast that absent evidence that Geithner gave “preferential treatment to people in the hiring process” or was guilty of sexual harassment, she was “really hard-pressed” to see a legitimate reason for running the story.

But this story had a more fundamental problem than lack of public interest. It was sourced almost entirely from a guy who was extorting Geithner. Specifically, the bulk of the story came from texts provided to Gawker staff writer Jordan Sargent. Despite this, according to Mother Jones, Gawker took onlyone working day to research, vet, and fact-check the story before it went live.

A number of media experts found the rapid turnaround time for this story extremely problematic. Ken Paulson, former editor-in-chief of USA Today and current president of the First Amendment Center, told Mother Jones that stories that could even potentially wreck someone’s reputation “are typically vetted over a longer period.” Over that time, Paulson added, details could come up that “could give you pause about publishing.” First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams was interviewed in the same article, saying that when there is evidence of blackmail or extortion, it ought to be “a blinking yellow light, or even a blinking red light” to thoroughly vet it before you even consider publishing it.

Gawker’s defense, at the time, seemed to be that the story was true and nothing else mattered. In response to withering criticism—including from Gawker’s own readers—Natasha Vargas-Cooper of Jezebel harrumphed in a since-deleted tweet that in her mind, “if it’s true, you publish.”

The fact that Gawker seemed to justify this story simply because it was true appeared especially tone-deaf a mere four years after the News of the World wasforced out of existence due to rampant phone-hacking. Indeed, Gawker’s ethos appeared little different from that of WikiLeaks. By then, we’d known since at least 2010 that Julian Assange’s idea of transparency includedreleasing unredacted Social Security numbers—and dismissing any potential harm as “collateral damage.”

A mere 18 hours after the story went live, Gawker Media’s six-member managing partnershipvoted to remove it over thefurious objections of Gawker’s editorial staff. But when Gawker founder and CEO Nick Denton deliveredthe official explanation for removing the post, he proved that he still didn’t get it.

Denton said that the story about Geithner was “true and well reported,” which would have been enough to justify running it “in the early days of the Internet.” However, he said, “Gawker is no longer the insolent blog that began in 2003,” and this meant that potential stories “have to be true and interesting” in order to pass editorial muster. Denton went further in a memo to Gawker’s editorial team, saying that he was “ashamed” to have his name attached to the story, even if “we were within our legal right to publish.”

There are times when what was considered good reporting years ago is patently unacceptable now. For instance, the relentless coverage of Britney Spears in the early 2000swould never be tolerated today given greater awareness about mental health and sexism. But this didn’t even come close to being one of those times. By suggesting that an article that essentially amounted to aiding and abetting extortion would be even remotely acceptable in 2003, Denton made his statement announcing the article’s deletion amount to a non-apology apology. It also casts a pall on the good that Gawker actually did—like turning the hot lights on Toronto Mayor Rob Ford’s substance abuse, or revealing that Bill O’Reilly used his influence to start an investigation of his ex-wife’s boyfriend.

Soon after the furor over the Geithner article died down, it became even clearer just how serious Gawker’s cultural problem was. In July 2015, Vanity Fair writer Richard Lawsontweeted a mea culpa about his days at Gawker. He admitted that he’d written, on orders from his boss, “baseless posts accusing an actor of raping an ex-boyfriend.” That actor wasJames Franco.

From 2008 to around 2014, Gawker churned out a series of articles that attempted to out Franco. The first of these articles, penned by Lawson, was a follow-up to ablind item in the New York Postin which an unidentified actor reportedly broke into his former boyfriend’s apartment and violently raped him. Inhis article, Lawson mused that the three likely suspects were Will Smith, Christian Bale—and Franco.

Soon afterward, Lawsonwrote another article suggesting that based on Gawker commenters’ sentiment, “the people” felt Franco was a gay rapist. He then followed that up witha third article suggesting that the “gay rapist” Franco had actually been mentioned by the person who tipped off the Post about the supposed violent attack. If there is any difference between that article and Trump’s penchant for spewing baseless garbage that’s supposedly based on what “many people are saying,” I don’t see it.

Later, other Gawker writerspenned articles suggesting that Franco was gay, based on the thinnest reeds of evidence. According to The Daily Beast, this was part of Gawker’s “creepy obsession with outing closeted men.” Granted, Franco is no angel. In 2021, he not only settled a lawsuit alleging that he harassed several students at the acting school he ran from 2014 to 2017, but admitted sleeping with some of his students.

Seen in this light, it’s no wonder that it took more than six years and at least one false start for Gawker to be revived. It returned in the summer of 2021 as a sister publication to women’s magazine Bustle, who bought Gawker’s remains in 2019. One would have thought that given Gawker’s popularity, it would have been revived sooner. However, NPR’s Folkenflik noted that when Univision bought Gawker’s sister sites, it concluded that Gawker itself was “too toxic to touch.”

Given how long it took for Gawker to be revived, any potential white knights must have reached the same conclusion. Who would want to take on an organization that not only believed there was a time where extortion was at all acceptable, but had no qualms about running libel?

Indeed, even as I write this, the articles libeling Franco are still available on Gawker’s website. That contrasts sharply with how the Times handled the initial version of its editorial attack on Palin. Contrary to what she and her fellow deplorables would have us believe, mainstream media outlets have standards—and those that lack standards get culled.

The same, however, can’t be said for some mainstays of right-wing media. For instance, when former Alabama chief justice Roy Moore made a bid for the U.S. Senateseat that came open when Jeff Sessions was tapped as Trump’s attorney general, Breitbart led a relentless smear campaign against the women who claimed Moore sexually assaulted them or pursued improper relationships with them. And it did so even though its editor-in-chief, Alex Marlow,believed at least one of the accusers was credible.

Marlow made this shocking assertion in an interview with CNN’s Oliver Darcy in December 2017, a month after Moore’s narrow loss to Democrat Doug Jones. He revealed that he believed that Moore’s initial accuser, Leigh Corfman, had “a lot of credibility.” Corfman, you may recall, claimed Moore sexually assaulted her when she was 14.

By admitting that he believed Moore’s accusers were credible even as Breitbart was smearing them, Marlow effectively put big, fat asterisks by every story Breitbart ran about the election. Victim shaming is bad enough, but doing so when you have reason to believe a victim is telling the truth is absolutely heinous. It’s even more so considering that Marlow admitted Breitbart went all-in for Moore to protect Trump.

Project Veritas also joined in on this disgraceful campaign. Its ringleader, James O’Keefe, even went as far as having one of his minions, Jaime Phillips, try to plant a bogus story in The Washington Postclaiming that Moore had impregnated her.But that story came apart when the Post did some actual journalism and discovered Phillips’ story had more red flags than a lifetime of Alabama football games. Most damningly, Phillips had created a GoFundMe page boasting about her goal to join “the conservative media movement” in exposing “the liberal MSM.”

To pile obscenity on top of insult, O’Keefe revealed in December 2017 that he believed Moore’s accusers were credible. And yet, he felt compelled to smear them because—wait for it—he felt their credibility was “not my subject matter,” and his real goal was exposing “bias in the media.” So the man whose stock in trade is targeting journalists for supposed bias admitted that doing so was so important that he felt compelled to shame victims that he believed were credible. Let that sink in.

To give you an idea how outrageous Breitbart and Project Veritas’ behavior was here, imagine if every news outlet that passed on the prospect of exposing Harvey Weinstein’s depravities had reason to believe Weinstein’s accusers were credible—and yet ran stories effectively calling them liars. It makes Palin’s squawking about theTimes’ failure to basically grovel before her look hypocritical as all hell.

Fortunately, at least two other members of the deplorable fever swamp are facing long-overdue accountability. Take InfoWars, for instance. Even after Alex Jones was kicked off mainstream social media and blackballed from smartphone app stores, it looked like he was going to continue his years-long promotion of conspiracy theories and hate speech—albeit with a much reduced audience.

But what may have been the beginning of the end for Jones came in 2018, not long after Facebook and YouTube gave him the boot. Several families of Sandy Hook victims, along with an FBI agent who responded to the shooting, sued Jones for defamation. Specifically, they wanted Jones held to account for his numerous claims that the Sandy Hook victims and survivors were “crisis actors.” These claims have resulted in the survivors being relentlessly harassed and trolled. The family of Noah Pozner, for instance, has had to move numerous times due to the harassment, and now live under high security in an undisclosed location. They have never been able to visit their son’s grave.

A series of legal reversals for Jones and InfoWars culminated in the fall of 2021. That September, a Texas judge issued three default judgments against Jones and InfoWars in two defamation suits filed by Sandy Hook families. The judge had lost patience with Jones’ refusal to turn over documents, and found it egregious enough to conclude that Jones had already lost. In November, a Connecticut judge issued a default judgment in a suit filed against Jones in another lawsuit. While damages will be determined at trial later this year, they are likely to add up to hundreds of millions of dollars—in all likelihood, enough to put InfoWars out of business.

Another fixture of the deplorable fever swamp, Gateway Pundit, may also face extinction after beingsued for orchestrating a vicious trolling campaign that falsely accused Georgia election workers of stealing their state for Joe Biden. The two workers, Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, claim that Gateway Pundit started a flood of disinformation that reached all the way to Trump, who attacked Freeman by name in his now-infamous attempt to shake down Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.

Dozens of bogus stories about Freeman and Moss resulted in death threats, doxing, and kidnapping attempts, among other things. Rather than apologize, Gateway Pundit actually tried to raise money off the lawsuit, netting over $81,000. If there is any justice, though, that fundraising effort will be a futile exercise. Gateway Pundit and its impresarios, the Hoft brothers, ought to get a very hard lesson on why private citizens only need to prove negligence in order to win libel suits.

The Times moves in almost no time at all by current media standards to retract claims about Palin—and yet, Breitbart, Project Veritas, and Gateway Pundit refuse to even attempt to apologize for far worse. What’s wrong with this picture?

The answer to that question is simpler than you may think. For all the caterwauling we hear from the right about the media not having any standards, we have seen instance after instance where the media has shown it actually does. Moreover, whenever elements of the mainstream press show they don’t have standards, they are weeded out. The demise of Gawker is a stark example of what happens when you catapult your way into the mainstream, only to show you have little regard for basic standards of decency.

If we are to remove the tinder from our politics, we must subject the media to the same level of accountability that Gawker faced, and what InfoWars is more than likely to face. As Gawker learned in 2016, that standard ought to apply regardless of political shade. But if Palin and other right-wingers are willing to take off their blinders, they would see that their own side of the media divide is long overdue for a cleaning.

Poll 426 votes Show Results

==

aha: bannon is just latest extension of rove's dismissal of reality-based journalism?

alt rt trolls win by owning the libs, often by making outrageous claim they know to be false to provoke an emotional reaction in weak woman-y snowflakes.

recall early graphic of blogs red/blue but red more insular/echo

flood the zone bannon/ troll it is a deliberate strategy to overwhelm correction [by lamestream media, fake news?!]  and thus moderation; you cannot trust news nor gubmint thus civil society erodes and --> authoritartian/fascism strong MAN/strict FATHER to fix, maga

flood the zone with shit/disinfo  might originally been troll tactic to deflect accurate critiques/blame and rubber glue inverse crypto bizarro mirror world --> Earth2; but always hype fear about THEM enemy threat to all that's good, grift for $ to fight the evil

amplify/accelerate --> radicalization; enemy // target // tyrant

aha echo is the opposite of correction,[WELL THERE'S A SORT OF CORRECTION BUT IN THE WRONG DIRECTION BY A SMALLER AND SMALLER SUBSET OF WACKOS THAT IS IRONICALLY GETTING LARGER AND LARGER AND FINDING/MAKING EACH OTHER [[CRAZIER]];  and algo gives incremental DOSE of crazy that builds on previous slightly less crazy:--> earth2 delusional break from reality is phase shift/level up/ tip pt? doom spiral?

12 21 an salon https://www.alternet.org/2021/12/tucker-carlson/

the TV was talking to me. I was in the midst of a delusion that the news anchors on CNN were operatives of a shadow government run by the Clintons. Every time I crossed the living room of my father's dingy basement apartment, their heads followed me and the news anchors interrogated me about my role in the Russia investigation. I believed "Russia investigation" was really code for a global conspiracy to enslave humanity through mind control. President Donald Trump and the Republicans were secretly working to overturn this shadow government and end the deep state programs. Targets of torture like me would be set free.

I turned the channel to FOX News. They repeated over and over that Hilary Clinton was a criminal. Even though I was a Democrat and had voted for Bill Clinton twice, I mailed in the form to join the Republican Party. Then I faxed evidence to the Russian consulate and sent a letter to the CIA offering to cooperate in the investigation.

What I didn't know I was that I was in the advanced stages of untreated paranoid schizophrenia. I was experiencing a psychotic break from reality.

It all seemed so real.

When I was eventually treated, my psychiatrist explained to me, "With paranoid schizophrenia it's just like "The Bourne Identity" — there are people for you, people against you, and somebody always has to be the villain."

I know what you're thinking — thank God they have medication for these people.Now, I wonder, is the average American so different from me? Are we all susceptible to paranoid thoughts, conspiratorial thinking and bias when executive function in the frontal lobes and our ability to reason are disabled by fear?

Terrified by a global pandemic, there are people who believe Bill Gates is an evil mastermind who engineered the coronavirus, with plans to depopulate and microchip the world's population, while profiting in the process. Antivaxxers refuse to take a vaccine they think will alter the structure of human DNA. Our brains seek to impose order. Conspiracy theories can provide answers to people who feel overwhelmed. But ideally the frontal lobes should step in to challenge strange thoughts by asking the question: Is what I am perceiving based in reality?

Dr. Oliver Freudenreich, Co-Director of the Massachusetts General Hospital Psychosis Program, states that there is no generally agreed-upon definition on what constitutes a delusion. From a psychiatric or biological perspective, delusions are driven by excessive amounts of the neurotransmitter dopamine. There is a biological basis to them, and treatment can correct this abnormality. A person with such delusions (e.g., somebody with schizophrenia) is expected to respond to being treated with an antipsychotic medication which blocks dopamine. In other words, one can take a pill and think rationally.

However, many people can't do that if their delusional thinking is part of a worldview that is more an ideology. According to Dr. Freudenreich, when people create their own insular groups — where delusional ideas are never corrected, but simply bounce around in an echo chamber — it is much harder to fight those types of delusions.

Policy divides are now often framed as a battle between good and evil.The most obvious consequence of overheated partisan rhetoric is that someone with an untreated psychiatric illness can go on to commit an act of violence against a person or group that they believe is a perpetrator of their suffering. This is rare. More common is the normal person who goes down the conspiracy theory rabbit hole and finds a world that makes sense to them.

On January 6th, 2021, incited by President Trump and believing the election had been stolen, a mob attacked the Capital building. Some in the crowd showed up for the "Storm," which is a QAnon conspiracy theory that posits that Trump was planning mass arrests of a secret cabal of satanic pedophiles and coup plotters, headed by Hilary Clinton and George Soros. Capitol police described the scene as being like fighting a medieval battle.

Social dynamics can propagate conspiracy-based thinking that mimics biologically triggered delusions. But there is no medication that will stop mass violence fueled by conspiracies.

I was a forty-six-year-old filmmaker when I suddenly began to have paranoid thoughts that people were following me. When I lost my day job due to bizarre behavior, I lost my excellent health insurance. I was dumped into America's broken mental health care system that offers substandard psychiatric care to patients on Medicaid, while spending vast amounts of taxpayer money. Misdiagnosed and neglected at the county hospital, I got sicker and sicker … until the TV started talking to me.

Years of my life are now gone. I try not to be bitter that I ended up unemployed, bankrupt and almost homeless, when all I needed was proper medical care. Every day I am grateful that I didn't wind up living on the streets or locked up in prison, like so many people with schizophrenia.

It's easy to mock people who think Bill Gates wants to put a microchip in them with the coronavirus vaccine. But it's much harder to separate conspiracy theorists' larger existential fears from our own. We're approaching the second year of a global pandemic, which is causing mass anxiety and depression. The internet routinely displays images of future roads in major cities as gushing rivers due to climate change. Billions of fish were boiled in the American Northwest and Canada during an unprecedented heatwave this summer. If someone's mind starts spinning with their wildest fears and finds solace in a conspiracy theory, can you really blame them?

Television is a powerful medium. CNN and FOX News repeat the same headlines, the same phrases, over and over in the same news day. Back then, these read to my unhinged mind as coded speech; to the unsuspecting public, it is more akin to propaganda. When I was psychotic, I thought a shadow government had a ministry of propaganda and they colluded across networks. I worry about living in a country where the two major political parties are always at war, unable to get anything done, and the public is fed a delusional world by networks and social media companies competing for viewers.

People with paranoid schizophrenia see patterns that don't actually exist. Just like conspiracy theorists, they are constantly scanning the news for pieces of information to connect the dots about unseen forces controlling events. Both groups believe they are being persecuted by others. I had grandiose beliefs that I was at the center of every news story on TV. My mind was looking to cast a villain to account for the symptoms of a brain disease. The media handed me a culprit to blame. [q or trump sent me]

Dr. Anthony Fauci has complained about the extraordinary divisiveness surrounding the public health crisis created by the pandemic. The current battle is over masks and vaccines. FOX News paints the Democratic Party as a threat to democracy that has invented domestic enemies, such as the unvaccinated, to desperately cling to power. News anchors across CNN repeat the phrase "viral blizzard" to warn the public and scare the unvaccinated about the new variant. Fear mongering is psychologically destabilizing to the most normal person. But this media environment can be toxic to someone with an untreated psychiatric illness. I wish politicians and their media allies would stop contributing to the collective unraveling of the American mind.

CORRECTION IS HARD B/C

aha/doh IT'S SYSTEMIC:  shift platform eg telegram, then use bad spelling, it's resilient b/c it's a network

amplify, algo, radicalization, echo/escalator

https://theconversation.com/facebook-whistleblower-frances-haugen-testified-that-the-companys-algorithms-are-dangerous-heres-how-they-can-manipulate-you-169420

Fo:{rmer Facebook product manager Frances Haugen testified before the U.S. Senate on Oct. 5, 2021, that the company’s social media platforms “}:{.”:(style="background-color:#ffffff;"/maxresdefault.jpg):{.”}:

Haugen was the primary source for a Wall Street Journal exposé on the company. She called Facebook’s algorithms dangerous, said Facebook executives were aware of the threat but put profits before people, and called on Congress to regulate the company.

Social media platforms rely heavily on people’s behavior to decide on the content that you see. In particular, they watch for content that people respond to or “engage” with by liking, commenting and sharing. Troll farms, organizations that spread provocative content, exploit this by copying high-engagement content and posting it as their own, which helps them reach a wide audience.

As a computer scientist who studies the ways large numbers of people interact using technology, I understand the logic of using the wisdom of the crowds in these algorithms. I also see substantial pitfalls in how the social media companies do so in practice.

From lions on the savanna to likes on Facebook

The concept of the wisdom of crowds assumes that using signals from others’ actions, opinions and preferences as a guide will lead to sound decisions. For example, collective predictions are normally more accurate than individual ones. Collective intelligence is used to predict financial markets, sports, elections and even disease outbreaks.

Throughout millions of years of evolution, these principles have been coded into the human brain in the form of cognitive biases that come with names like familiarity, mere exposure and bandwagon effect. If everyone starts running, you should also start running; maybe someone saw a lion coming and running could save your life. You may not know why, but it’s wiser to ask questions later.

Your brain picks up clues from the environment – including your peers – and uses simple rules to quickly translate those signals into decisions: Go with the winner, follow the majority, copy your neighbor. These rules work remarkably well in typical situations because they are based on sound assumptions. For example, they assume that people often act rationally, it is unlikely that many are wrong, the past predicts the future, and so on.

Technology allows people to access signals from much larger numbers of other people, most of whom they do not know. Artificial intelligence applications make heavy use of these popularity or “engagement” signals, from selecting search engine results to recommending music and videos, and from suggesting friends to ranking posts on news feeds.

Not everything viral deserves to be

Our research shows that virtually all web technology platforms, such as social media and news recommendation systems, have a strong popularity bias. When applications are driven by cues like engagement rather than explicit search engine queries, popularity bias can lead to harmful unintended consequences.

Social media like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube and TikTok rely heavily on AI algorithms to rank and recommend content. These algorithms take as input what you like, comment on and share – in other words, content you engage with. The goal of the algorithms is to maximize engagement by finding out what people like and ranking it at the top of their feeds.

A primer on the Facebook algorithm.[vid?]

On the surface this seems reasonable. If people like credible news, expert opinions and fun videos, these algorithms should identify such high-quality content. But the wisdom of the crowds makes a key assumption here: that recommending what is popular will help high-quality content “bubble up.”

We tested this assumption by studying an algorithm that ranks items using a mix of quality and popularity. We found that in general, popularity bias is more likely to lower the overall quality of content. The reason is that engagement is not a reliable indicator of quality when few people have been exposed to an item. In these cases, engagement generates a noisy signal, and the algorithm is likely to amplify this initial noise. Once the popularity of a low-quality item is large enough, it will keep getting amplified.

Algorithms aren’t the only thing affected by engagement bias – it can affect people too. Evidence shows that information is transmitted via “complex contagion,” meaning the more times people are exposed to an idea online, the more likely they are to adopt and reshare it. When social media tells people an item is going viral, their cognitive biases kick in and translate into the irresistible urge to pay attention to it and share it.

Not-so-wise crowds

We recently ran an experiment using a news literacy app called Fakey. It is a game developed by our lab that simulates a news feed like those of Facebook and Twitter. Players see a mix of current articles from fake news, junk science, hyperpartisan and conspiratorial sources, as well as mainstream sources. They get points for sharing or liking news from reliable sources and for flagging low-credibility articles for fact-checking.

We found that players are more likely to like or share and less likely to flag articles from low-credibility sources when players can see that many other users have engaged with those articles. Exposure to the engagement metrics thus creates a vulnerability.

The wisdom of the crowds fails because it is built on the false assumption that the crowd is made up of diverse, independent sources. There may be several reasons this is not the case.

First, because of people’s tendency to associate with similar people, their online neighborhoods are not very diverse. The ease with which social media users can unfriend those with whom they disagree pushes people into homogeneous communities, often referred to as echo chambers.

Second, because many people’s friends are friends of one another, they influence one another. A famous experiment demonstrated that knowing what music your friends like affects your own stated preferences. Your social desire to conform distorts your independent judgment.

Third, popularity signals can be gamed. Over the years, search engines have developed sophisticated techniques to counter so-called “link farms” and other schemes to manipulate search algorithms. Social media platforms, on the other hand, are just beginning to learn about their own vulnerabilities.

People aiming to manipulate the information market have created fake accounts, like trolls and social bots, and organized fake networks. They have flooded the network to create the appearance that a conspiracy theory or a political candidate is popular, tricking both platform algorithms and people’s cognitive biases at once. They have even altered the structure of social networks to create illusions about majority opinions.

Dialing down engagement

What to do? Technology platforms are currently on the defensive. They are becoming more aggressive during elections in taking down fake accounts and harmful misinformation. But these efforts can be akin to a game of whack-a-mole.

A different, preventive approach would be to add friction. In other words, to slow down the process of spreading information. High-frequency behaviors such as automated liking and sharing could be inhibited by CAPTCHA tests, which require a human to respond, or fees. Not only would this decrease opportunities for manipulation, but with less information people would be able to pay more attention to what they see. It would leave less room for engagement bias to affect people’s decisions.

It would also help if social media companies adjusted their algorithms to rely less on engagement signals and more on quality signals to determine the content they serve you. Perhaps the whistleblower revelations will provide the necessary impetus.

newspaper edit bd legit?

https://www.alternet.org/2021/10/ted-cruz-2655236983/

Dallas Morning News torches Ted Cruz for blaming Trump's debt crisis on Democrats

Meaghan Ellis

October 06, 2021

The Dallas Morning News is pushing back against Sen. Ted Cruz's (R-Texas) attempt to blame Democrats for the massive debt the United States is faced with as the party tries to pass the much-needed, trillion-dollar infrastructure package.

Its no secret that the Republican lawmaker is worki....

aha: correction is weak apology, feminine

https://www.alternet.org/2021/07/trump-election-claims/

ME

Since the 2020 presidential election, conservative news outlets have been popping up in droves to continue circulating former President Donald Trump's big lie about the election.

So how are outlets continuing to do this? According to NPR, it is more of a trick of the eye. The publication https://www.npr.org/2021/07/02/1011916687/how-pro-trump-local-news-sites-keep-pushing-2020-election-misinformation.

While the publication appears to be just a local news outlet, NPR reports that it is actually flagship of a news syndicate, known as The Star News Network, which consists of several pro-Trump sites. Like The Georgia Star News, the network has created similar sites for states like Arizona, Ohio, and Florida.

Per NPR:

"Its part of the Star News Network - an expanding network of pro-Trump sites seeking to influence local politics with conservative opinion by mimicking the look and feel of local newspaper sites. The group operates eight state-focused news sites, including in key Electoral College states such as Michigan, Arizona, Ohio and Florida."

By focusing on states where Trump is still heavily favored among voters, the network can continue to circulate misinformation since the audience is still focused on what transpired during and after the election.

During a rally in Ohio Las weekend, Trump also added more fuel to the fire with more dangerous claims of voter fraud.

"The biggest tragedy of all is millions of Americans have lost confidence in their vote," Trump said." We can't let that happen. And that's why I say you have to know what took place in 2020 before you can vote in 2022 or 2024."

To name mafter worse, conservative publisher John Fredericksdefended defended sites and the information they share.

"We work very hard to fund our operation through legitimate advertising of all kinds, people that want to reach our expanding audience," he said. "And if somebody needs to reach informed, motivated readers that want the truth, advertising is a great opportunity for them, is a great [return on investment] potential."

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==

AHA: correction is a journalistic norm, not a law thus no real penalty for lying or just sloppiness (recall jrnl biz values the scoop 1st, thus speed vs accuracy, and clickbait values hype/eyeballs/ fear hate algo boost]

https://www.npr.org/2021/07/02/1011916687/how-pro-trump-local-news-sites-keep-pushing-2020-election-misinformation.

no lnx

How Pro-Trump Local News Sites Keep Pushing 2020 Election Misinformation

July 2, 20215:00 AM ET

STEPHEN FOWLER

FROM

Georgia Public Broadcasting

Georgia election workers begin their recount of ballots after the November election. Despite three recounts of the tally, former President Donald Trump and his allies falsely claim electoral fraud cost him the state.

If you don't follow politics in Georgia closely — or even if you do — you might be forgiven for not knowing much about The Georgia Star News.

Founded just after the November election when President Biden narrowly flipped the state by about 12,000 votes, it looks like a regular news website with a lifestyle section, a widget for the weather and stories about local and national goings-on.

But the site is more than just a local news outlet. It's part of the Star News Network — an expanding network of pro-Trump sites seeking to influence local politics with conservative opinion by mimicking the look and feel of local newspaper sites. The group operates eight state-focused news sites, including in key Electoral College states such as Michigan, Arizona, Ohio and Florida.

Steve Bannon, a former strategist for former President Donald Trump, described The Georgia Star News in a radio interview as content "you can't get anywhere else."

"We're not Conservative Inc.," he said. "It's very populist, it's very nationalist, it's very MAGA, it's very American First."

Pro-Trump media ecosystem

The Star News sites are part of a larger pro-Trump media ecosystem that emerged over the course of his four years in office. Since last year's election, some of those sites have spent months churning out false content suggesting Trump won the election and claiming that massive electoral fraud will be uncovered.

Many of the Star News sites have been around for a while, but the 2020 election — and an intense focus on swing states like Georgia — has helped the sites' stories reach a much a larger audience.

Georgia's fledgling website gets a boost from publisher John Fredericks' talk radio show that has featured numerous figures from Trump's orbit, including Bannon and former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski. His show also regularly features Georgia Republican politicians who have pushed false claims of election fraud or are challenging those who did not work to overturn the election.

Fredericks, who most recently hosted his talk show from Virginia, came to Georgia ahead of last January's dual Senate runoffs as part of an effort by conservatives (and conservative media) to support then-Sens.Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue's reelection campaign. He alsohosts a TV show on the Real America's Voice networkthat also features Bannon's "War Room: Pandemic" podcast popular with many election skeptics.

So there was a ready-made audience when the Georgia Star published a misleading story mid-June questioning the legitimacy of nearly 20,000 absentee ballots placed in Georgia drop boxes — slightly more than the margin of Biden's victory there.

The story said that Fulton County, which includes Atlanta, could not produce crucial chain of custody documentation for ballots returned in drop boxes, suggesting that the ballots may not have been legitimate.

Days later, county officials were able to find all but eight of those forms, said all the ballots were accounted for — and noted that Georgia's votes were counted three different times in November.

"The most explosive thing" ESCA ECHO

But in the conservative alternate media sphere, the story began to pick up steam. On Fredericks' radio show, Bannon called it "the most explosive thing that I think has happened in the entire process."

From there it ricocheted across the pro-Trump mediasphere to TV networks like One America News and conspiracy sites such as The Gateway Pundit.

But the story was not limited to the fringe of Republican politics: several pro-Trump lawmakers and primary challengers in Georgia demanded an investigation. Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger — himself a frequent target of misinformation, attacks and death threats because of these sites — did too. That led mainstream outlets to run with Raffensperger's response, pushing the story further into the spotlight.

Just a few days after the original Georgia Star story, Trump issued several statements linking to a One America News segment about the misleading story and praising the Georgia Star writer by name for "the incredible reporting you have done."

The Georgia Star hasn't updated its original story, or several follow-up pieces, with Fulton County's release of the data.

In an interview, the story's author, Laura Baigert, blamed the county for providing incomplete documents and information.

"Not our problem to solve" ~ CORRECTION

"If they can't tell us how many forms they have and how many ballots they have, that's an issue for people who are administering an election," she said. "That's not our problem to solve that for them."

At the time, a Fulton County spokeswoman said that the county followed proper procedures in collecting the drop box ballots and the county was continuing to research the few remaining missing chain of custody forms. The county elections director said that staff spent more than 200 hours that week locating the "missing" forms before they were provided to Georgia Public Broadcasting.

But the story breathed new life into Trump's false claims, which he repeated at length during a rally last Saturday in Ohio.

"The biggest tragedy of all is millions of Americans have lost confidence in their vote," he said. "We can't let that happen. And that's why I say you have to know what took place in 2020 before you can vote in 2022 or 2024."

After the rally, Baigert snagged an exclusive half-hour interview with the former president as he rode back to the airport. The next day, an all-caps headline appeared on The Ohio Star, Georgia Star and sister sites in battlegrounds like Michigan and Arizona, touting the conversation and its key takeaway.

"There's no more important issue than the 2020 election," Trump said.

Fredericks defended the outlet's coverage in an interview and said that the Georgia Star is a credible news service for Georgians that acts as an alternative to "fake news" mainstream media."Our goal is to speak truth to power in the world of fake news, and that's really what we're dealing with, that's why we're here," he said. "That's why we have an audience."

Less than seven months into existence, Fredericks said that the website was profitable, thanks to a crush of advertising from local Republican candidates and conservative groups.

"We work very hard to fund our operation through legitimate advertising of all kinds, people that want to reach our expanding audience," he said. "And if somebody needs to reach informed, motivated readers that want the truth, advertising is a great opportunity for them, is a great [return on investment] potential."

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house oversight is correction thus moderation unless perverse benghazi BS weaponized for political purpose

eg

alexander et al suppress covid #, kids

https://www.alternet.org/2021/02/trump-administration

veema s on task force? pix]

Former President Donald Trump's administration is under fire for hindering the government's pandemic response and rolling back Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) coronavirus mitigation guidelines in an effort to protect his interests.

According to CNBC News, the latest reports stem from documentation compiled during the House Oversight investigation launched back in September 2020. Based on the documents, the Trump administration is said to have intentionally suppressed COVID-19 testing by rolling back the CDC guidelines.

To justify the scaling back of COVID testing, former Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) scientific advisor Paul Alexander argued there was little significance in testing asymptomatic individuals, according to emails obtained by the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis.

"Testing asymptomatic people to seek asymptomatic cases is not the point of testing, for in the end, all this accomplishes is we end up quarantining asymptomatic, low-risk people and preventing the workforce from working," Alexander wrote shortly after HHS officials received an update about the CDC's guidelines. "In this light, it would be unreasonable based on the prevailing data to have widespread testing of schools and colleges/universities. This will not allow them to optimally re-open."

According to the Daily Beast, another report — which would have highlighted elevated death totals in young people — was an area of concern for Alexander. Although the report was true, Alexander emailed White House COVID Task Force Senior Adviser Scott Atlas warning that it was "very duplicitous to damage the administration."

Alexander said, "The timing of this is meant to interfere with school re-opening and we need to get something out fast to preempt this in the next day or so and I can work with you on it."

According to the documentation, Alexander also attempted to convince Atlas to "craft an op-ed .. disputing the reporting for on face value, it is meant to mislead."

After deep scrutiny about the rollback of guidelines, the CDC quietly backpedaled on the changes, replacing the previous guidance with recommendations suggesting that anyone who "has been in close contact with an infected person needs a Covid-19 test."

In December, email correspondence to HHS public-affairs adviser Michael Caputo also highlighted Alexander's attemptto advocate for the former president to consider a "herd immunity" strategy" for the United States in handling the coronavirus.

"There is no other way, we need to establish herd, and it only comes about allowing the non-high-risk groups expose themselves to the virus. PERIOD," Alexander's letter read. "Infants, kids, teens, young people, young adults, middle-aged with no conditions, etc. have zero to little risk…. so we use them to develop herd… we want them infected…."

The latest report comes less than one week after veteran election consultant Tony Fabrizio and Republican pollster John McLaughlin both released assessments of the 2020 election and what led to Trump's loss. Despite the former president's claims of voter fraud, both analyses suggest Trump's failed leadership amid the pandemic contributed significantly to his electoral defeat.

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wow 2x in one week, post smartmatic lawsuit?

an 421

no twt eg nikki h "disgusting"

A Fox News host is displeased with his network's publishing of false reports over the last several days.

According to The Huff Post, Juan Williams admitted that he is skeptical of the allegations being leveled against former Secretary of State John Kerry due to the number of inaccurate reports his network has released.

During the Fox News broadcast of "The Five" on Tuesday, April 27, Williams weighed in on the details surrounding Kerry's alleged discussion Iran's foreign minister regarding Israeli intelligence. However, Williams made it clear he was not sure if he could believe allegations due to the onslaught of falsehoods reported by his network over the last several days.

He also expressed concern about right-wing news outlets that echo scathing stories simply because the report attacks a member of the opposing party.

"It just worries me, like last week we had the hamburger story, 'Oh, Biden is going to take your hamburger.' Kamala Harris' book is being given to immigrants," said Williams. "These stories are false, but the right-wing echo chamber starts going crazy because you can go after a Democrat."

As reports about the allegations began circulating on right-wing news outlets, Kerry who now serves as the first United States Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, tweeted to set the record straight.

According to the former lawmaker, the allegations are "unequivocally false." With John Hudson's tweet detailing the truth about the allegations, Kerry tweeted, "I can tell you that this story and these allegations are unequivocally false. This never happened - either when I was Secretary of State or since."

Williams' remarks come just days after Fox News addressed the criticism of its inaccurate report about President Joe Biden's so-called push to limit Americans' beef consumption. On Monday, Fox News' John Roberts addressed the issue as he corrected the story.

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aha, partially just famous narcisism, but also spec ops keep head down, keep moving, deny all [roger?]

nb lincoln and others seen as gt prez b/c they grew;

:{

}:

note, never admit wrong, deny, no correction:

3/10

:{

}:

https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/new-report-reveals-the-bewildering-reason-trump-is-reluctant-to-declare-an-emergency-over-coronavirus/

...latest news out of the White House is incomprehensibly dire. Politico is reporting that Donald Trump is “reluctant” to give the COVID-19 pandemic an emergency designation, which would provide emergency funding to states and allow a Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) response in affected areas, because Trump believes calling it an “emergency” would go against his prior insistence that the coronavirus outbreak was no worse than the yearly fl

...

==

maN bites dog 420 an

:{

trump finally shows signs of shame as he flees a press briefing without answering questions after disinfectant fiasco

Breitbart News issues humiliating correction on a bogus ‘fact-check’ that denied Trump proposed injecting disinfectants

==

}:

==

https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/trump-ordered-doj-investigation-into-hillary-clinton-goes-out-with-a-whimper-now-what

no lnx

Trump-ordered DOJ investigation into Hillary Clinton goes out with a whimper. Now what?

Written by David Badash / The New Civil Rights Movement January 12, 2020

It was October 9, 2016. Candidate Donald Trump  at the second presidential debate promised – and threatened – Hillary Clinton that if he became president she would go to prison.

“It’s just awfully good that someone with the temperament of Donald Trump is not in charge of the law in our country,” a grinning Secretary Clinton on stage told the audience.

“Because you’d be in jail,” a grimacing Trump gloated.

It was such a stunning moment, a gut punch to American democracy and presidential politics. We don’t investigate our political opponents and presidents don’t promise – or threaten – to lock them up.

It was cheered by the far right, and to this day extremists celebrate the anniversary of those horrific words.

Students For Trump

@TrumpStudents

3 years ago today, President @realDonaldTrump had one of the greatest debate moments of all time...

When Hillary Clinton said it was a good thing he wasn't in charge of the justice system,

To which President Trump responded, "Because you'd be in jail."

Priceless. ??

Embedded video

One month later to the day, in the wee hours of the morning, the news networks would call the election for Trump, despite Clinton winning the popular election by nearly three million more votes.

Less than one year in to office, President Donald Trump used the power of social media to lie repeatedly about his former political opponent, and forced his Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, to open an investigation into Clinton.

Donald J. Trump

@realDonaldTrump

Everybody is asking why the Justice Department (and FBI) isn't looking into all of the dishonesty going on with Crooked Hillary & the Dems..

78.8K

2:57 AM - Nov 3, 2017

Twitter Ads info and privacy

42.5K people are talking about this

Donald J. Trump

@realDonaldTrump

Many people in our Country are askingwhat the “Justice” Department is going to do about the fact that totally Crooked Hillary, AFTER receiving a subpoena from the United States Congress, deleted and “acid washed”33,000 Emails? No justice!

101K

6:13 PM - Dec 2, 2017

Twitter Ads info and privacy

71.2K people are talking about this

There were no grounds. She had been investigated before by the FBI and cleared. She had been investigated before by Congress multiple times and cleared. She had sat before Congress for 11 hours in a sham Benghazi hearing (one of many sham Benghazi investigations by Republicans on Capitol Hill), and even the top Republican announced at the end of that grueling day – during which Clinton performed, some said brilliantly – that they had learned nothing new.

Sessions’ investigation cast a big net, as The Washington Post reported Thursday.

Attorney General Sessions directed John Huber, the U.S. attorney in Utah, in November of 2017 to, as the Post details, review “a wide array of issues related to Clinton. They included the Clinton Foundation and Uranium One matters, along with the FBI’s handling of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of state and alleged leaks by former FBI director James B. Comey.”

“Your recommendations should include whether any matters not currently under investigation warrants the opening of an investigation, whether any matters currently under investigation require further resources or further investigation, and whether any matters would merit the appointment of a Special Counsel,” Sessions told Huber.

More than two years later the investigation is concluding.

It has found nothing – ending “with no tangible results,” the Post notes, because there was never any “there” there.

Both current and former “law enforcement officials said they never expected the effort to produce much of anything.”

The cost to taxpayers is unknown.

The cost to Clinton’s reputation can be guessed, given also that the investigation is ending in silence.

There will be no FBI Director holding a press conference clearing Clinton. There will be no Attorney General apologizing. There will be nothing but yet another failed attack on Hillary Clinton, millions more of the taxpayers’ dollars taken from the Treasury’s coffers, all to prop up an actual political witch hunt and conspiracy theories that have made Republicans and the conservative media rich.

The beneficiaries, of course, are President Trump and the GOP, who have raised countless fortunes from suckered voters certain that “Crooked Hillary,” as Trump has called her – on Twitter alone – 379 times, is guilty.

She is not.

What happens next?

Nothing.

==

correction under legal duress?

619 mojo no lnx docs

https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2019/06/a-scientist-took-climate-change-deniers-to-court-and-wrested-an-apology-from-them/

ENVIRONMENT

JUNE 16, 2019

A Scientist Took Climate Change Deniers to Court and Wrested an Apology From Them

In the fight against climate disinformation, experts like him are turning to new arenas.

EMMA MCINTOSH

Scientist Michael Mann attends the New York screening of the HBO documentary, "How To Let Go Of The World And All The Things Climate Can't Change" in New York City.Slaven Vlasic/Getty/HBO

This story was originally published by National Observer and is shared here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

In 2011, renowned scientist Michael E. Mann sued a Canadian think tank that published an interview suggesting his work on climate change was fraud.

Eight years later, the Winnipeg-based Frontier Centre for Public Policy—which often promotes climate change denial—apologized Friday and wiped the inflammatory interview from its website.

“(The apology) gives me faith in our legal system that truth can still win out, even in an era of ‘fake news’ and ‘alternative facts,'” Mann said in an email to National Observer.

In the fight against climate disinformation, experts like Mann, an atmospheric scientist at Pennsylvania State University, are turning to new arenas.

Mann is best known as the lead researcher on a landmark 1998 paper on climate change. He and three colleagues reconstructed global temperatures going back about 500 years, producing a now-infamous sideways-hockey-stick-like graph of global temperatures that showed a sharp upswing beginning in the 1900s.

Mann has spent the two decades since the paper’s publication defending it and his reputation against climate change deniers—sometimes in court. He settled with the Frontier Centre on Friday, but a related case in British Columbia and a similar one in the United States are ongoing.

In a message posted to its website, the Frontier Centre apologized for publishing “untrue and disparaging” comments about Mann.

“Although the Frontier Centre for Public Policy still does not see eye to eye with Mr. Mann on the subject of global warming and climate change, we now accept that it was wrong to publish allegations by others that Mr. Mann did not comply with ethical standards…” the think tank wrote in part.

@MichaelEMann

I've settled my claims in BC Supreme Court against The Frontier Centre for Public Policy Inc. on a basis which includes the following retraction & apology.I have not settled my claims against Tim Ball, who remains a defendant in that lawsuit: https://fcpp.org/retraction-and-apology-to-michael-mann/ …

1,173

12:29 PM - Jun 7, 2019

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[hannity claims that seth r story somhow negates russia collusion? impeach? vid]

https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/04/media/jerome-corsi-seth-rich/index.html

New York (CNN Business)Right-wing author Jerome Corsi issued an apology on Monday and retracted an InfoWars story he wrote spreading a conspiracy theory about murdered Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich.

In the retraction, which was featured on the front page of InfoWars, a fringe website with a long history of spreading conspiracy theories, Corsi conceded that "his allegations were not based upon any independent factual knowledge."

"It was not Dr. Corsi's intent to rely upon inaccurate information, or to cause any suffering to Mr. Rich's family," reads the retraction. "To that end, Dr. Corsi retracts the article and apologizes to the Rich family."

The retraction was requested by the legal team for Aaron Rich, the brother of Seth Rich, a spokesperson for Aaron Rich's legal team told CNN.

Corsi's retracted story cited a Washington Times column that said, without evidence, that Seth Rich leaked a trove of DNC emails to WikiLeaks.

The Washington Times column, which Corsi relied on for his own article, was deleted in October 2018 after Aaron Rich filed a lawsuit against the conservative newspaper and others.

"The Column included statements about Aaron Rich, the brother of former Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich, that we now believe to be false," read part of the Washington Times' retraction.

The Washington Times' column, which the lawsuit said was published both online and in print, stated that it was "well known in intelligence circles that Seth Rich and his brother, Aaron Rich, downloaded the DNC emails and was paid by Wikileaks for that information."

The Washington Times settles lawsuit with Seth Rich's brother, issues retraction and apology for its coverage

The Washington Times settles lawsuit with Seth Rich's brother, issues retraction and apology for its coverage

Seth Rich was fatally shot in Washington, DC, in July 2016. Police have said evidence indicates he was the victim of a botched robbery, but in the wake of his death, far-right activists and media organizations suggested something far more sinister.

Without real evidence, these far-right activists peddled a conspiracy theory that said Seth Rich leaked a trove of DNC emails to Wikileaks and was killed in retribution for the supposed leak. The theory was convenient for some on the right as they disputed allegations Russia hacked the DNC, something President Donald Trump had raised doubts about.

Joshua Riley and Meryl Governski, who also serve as part of Aaron Rich's counsel, said in a joint-statement that "the apology and retraction issued today by Mr. Corsi and posted by Infowars is another important step toward obtaining justice for the Rich family."

"We will continue to litigate our defamation claims against conspiracy theorists who refuse to retract and apologize for similar false statements," Riley and Governski said.

A representative for InfoWars did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday afternoon. But Corsi tweeted that as a Christian, he has "sympathy for the suffering the Seth Rich family has gone through."

Corsi also told CNN that he retracted this specific story because it relied on information that had been retracted by the Washington Times. However, he said that he continues to believe that it's possible that the leak of DNC emails was an inside job and that investigators should look into whether Seth Rich played a role.

Corsi, an acquaintance of Trump ally Roger Stone, has spent years spreading right-wing conspiracy theories. In recent months, he has found himself caught in special counsel Robert Mueller's probe into election interference.

Despite previously saying he was cooperating with investigators, Corsi filed a lawsuit in December 2018 against Mueller claiming federal authorities unconstitutionally searched his phone and electronic records.

==

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619 an salon curry, wm

https://www.alternet.org/2019/06/heres-how-iraq-and-the-great-recession-paved-the-way-for-donald-trump

i guess this is about failure/ lack of correction

accountability

America's failures have painted us into a corner. Impeachment isn't the only answer, but it's a necessary start.

In my dream, it’s 2021. Donald Trump has lost by the biggest popular vote margin in history. (The Electoral College? Unanimous!) Criminal charges rain down on him. As squad cars ring Trump Tower, a nasal voice shouts, “Come and get me, dirty coppers!”  From a bullhorn, the reply issues: “Come out with your tiny hands in the air!”

Nancy Pelosi must have dreams just like it. “Sources” say she seeks to quell impeachment by declaring she’d rather see Trump in jail. Who wouldn’t? But would the next batch of Barrs, Muellers and Rosensteins be any more likely than the last to get the job done? It’s a sweet dream, but a risky bet.

Pelosi assumes that Trump loses and a Democrat orders it done. Last week, Sen. Kamala Harris made an unseemly pledge to do just that. Harris, an ex-prosecutor, should know better. Among the abuses for which Trump ought to be impeached is his use of his office to punish and bully critics. Democrats must be clear: Federal prosecutors may bring obstruction and corruption cases against anyone they believe guilty, Trump included, but a Democrat won’t weaponize the law.

It doesn’t mean a Democratic president can’t conduct an inquiry or name another special counsel, but there’s no assurance one would. Trump’s ascendance marks the third time this century that criminal or otherwise invidious behavior brought catastrophe upon our country. The first two times, a Democratic president decided it wasn’t worth the aggravation of finding out how it all went down. Some history.

After the Iraq war, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown appointed a commission to investigate how exactly his country stumbled into such a tragic fiasco.The Chilcot Report (for Lord John Chilcot, who led the commission) was an account of political bungling and deception as thorough and damning as the Pentagon Papers. Its 2016 release made former Prime Minister Tony Blair, chief accomplice to George W. Bush in that disastrous undertaking, into a social leper. Unlike Robert Mueller, Chilcot had an absolute right to interview any witness and compel production of any document he felt he needed; nearly all his interviews were done in public, and he delivered his report direct to the people of the United Kingdom.

The war was hatched in America by ideologues bent on exporting democracy via bribery and force of arms.  In the eyes of many, it surpasses Vietnam as the worst foreign policy blunder in our nation’s history. In a speech to the nation summarizing the case for it, Bush leaned heavily on the only possible rationale for an unprovoked attack on a sovereign nation:

Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.

For months, his vice president and national security adviser peddled “evidence” of nuclear and chemical weapons. Before his speech, Bush was told by experts at the Department of Energy that the evidence was false, but he kept the news to himself. To this day it remains unproven who was lying, and who was only lied to.

The Congressional Budget Office says the war cost the U.S. $2 trillion. Nobel Prize-winning economist Joe Stiglitz puts it at $3 trillion. Nearly 4,500 U.S. military personnel died there, and tens of thousands more suffered disabling physical and psychic wounds. Iraqi casualties remain in dispute — as Gen. Tommy Franks informed reporters, “We don’t do body counts” — but estimates range from 180,000 to more than a million deaths. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees counted 3.7 million refugees. Americans think the war’s over. Last month, it took 166 Iraqi lives.

In 2009, as Gordon Brown was launching the Chilcot Inquiry, Barack Obama was being pressured to take a similar look back at how America was lured or lied into war. Obama took a different tack. Rather than appoint a commission with plenipotentiary powers, he did nothing. Aides said he thought retracing Bush’s path to war would make it hard to forge bipartisan alliances with Republicans.

Similar concerns colored his take on the other huge crisis he inherited, the 2008 Wall Street meltdown that leveled the global economy. No one knows its true cost, only that the number exceeds most human minds’ ability to conceptualize. A Government Accountability Office study put the U.S. cost at $22 trillion.

Social and political costs were even higher. Post-meltdown austerity measures, following on decades of stagnant wages just as millions of Middle East refugees flooded Europe, rocking center-left coalitions that had ruled the West since World War II. Far-right political parties the old order was too polite to label fascist began to metastasize. Britain got Brexit. America got Trump.

When the crisis broke, Obama was running for president. His closing stump speech was a litany of vows to curb corruption; above all, to punish Wall Street fraud. His administration never brought a case. Three years later, he went on “60 Minutes” to explain that the worst behavior wasn’t actually illegal. Given his dazzling intellect and access to wise counsel, one assumes he knew that what he said wasn’t true.

Privately, Obama revealed his thinking. He worried that prosecutions would hurt banks. He worried he’d lose personal support in the business community. (A major culprit, Goldman Sachs, was also his biggest donor.) And he worried he’d lose business backing vital to building bipartisan coalitions in Congress.

Lying was as much a cause of the Great Recession as it was of the Iraq war. Loan originators lied about applicants’ creditworthiness. Investment bankers lied about the toxicity of mortgage portfolios. Standard and Poor’s and Moody’s and Fitch all lied. So did Obama and most of Congress, which meant major reforms, excepting only Elizabeth Warren’s Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, were designed to curb “irrational exuberance,” not the immorality at the root of what befell us.

Instead of going to prison, bankers got bailed out, while homeowners got betrayed. Like the meltdown itself, the government’s response helped incite a populist revolt. Obama and Clinton Democrats were deaf to it, but Trump’s final 2016 TV ad began “Our movement is about replacing a failed and corrupt political establishment.” In the last week, it replaced nearly every other ad he had up in the industrial Midwest.

These failures — to investigate the origins of the Iraq war and the Great Recession and punish the culprits — were not anomalies. After 9/11, no one had the stomach to hold George W. Bush to account for ignoring intelligence reports on his desk, so the bipartisanship crowd invented a structural failure and wasted years rearranging intelligence and homeland security bureaucracies, resulted in a new Cabinet-level post, the Director of National Intelligence, who lacks the authority to direct anyone to do anything.

It happened after the 2000 election: Media barons set out to fix the exit polls, Congress set out to rid the world of hanging chads via nifty paperless ballots and the Democratic Party set out to rid the world of Ralph Nader.Thus, a pioneering GOP foray into voter suppression went nearly unremarked. Despite butterfly ballots, staged riots, a chief election official doing double duty as a Bush campaign chair and a Supreme Court concocting phony equal protection claims to rob Al Gore of real due process, Bush was clothed in legitimacy, leaving millions of Americans to conclude that the system was indeed rigged.

I doubt we’d be saddled with Trump had we not come to resemble him: way too materialistic, more than a bit narcissistic, unfocused, unlettered, infantile, even amoral. Our responses to these crises suggest that we also share a high tolerance for lying, a limited capacity for self-examination and an unspoken belief that the rich and powerful are above the law. Which brings us to the latest in our recent line of failures to look either evil or ourselves in the eye, the Mueller Report.

We live in a moment when comedians provide better political analysis than politicians or pundits, so it’s no surprise Bill Maher was first out of the box in April with a stinging rebuke of Mueller. What does surprise is that with two months gone by so few others have joined him. If Maher’s takedown of the report (“one feckless punt after another”) overstates the case, it’s by less than you may think.

One of the few things Attorney General William Barr said about the Mueller report that is likely true is that he was surprised Mueller made no finding as to whether Donald Trump obstructed justice. He wasn’t surprised Mueller didn’t charge Trump with a crime, only that Mueller wouldn’t say whether Trump had committed one.

Both men adhere to two Justice Department opinions: one written by Nixon’s Justice Department just before Nixon got impeached; the other by Clinton’s just after he got impeached. The authors of both opinions claim that while in office, their bosses can’t be prosecuted, even under sealed indictment. Both concede that no language in the Constitution supports the claim; neither cites a Supreme Court case other than to distinguish present facts from seemingly adverse holdings.

The opinions, written by men who hoped the president thought well of them, rest on the notion that a criminal trial would intrude too much on his dignity and convenience. It seems a rickety table on which to lay a claim of immunity. What shocked Barr was that Mueller decided, all on his own, to put even more weight on it. To Mueller, it’s unfair to a president you don’t charge with a crime even to say he committed one, because he can’t answer in the court you didn’t haul him into. Such an aerial display of circular logic hadn’t even occurred to Barr, who spends every waking moment thinking of ways to get Trump off the hook.

Mueller’s mandate was not only to decide whether to prosecute possible crimes but to complete the intelligence investigation into Russian election meddling begun by James Comey. He nailed the Russians but dropped the ball when he got to Team Trump. It’s why the media thought he found no collusion between Russia and the campaign. He found collusion aplenty but thought he didn’t have enough proof to charge conspiracy. He repeats the familiar line that collusion isn’t a crime. But did Trump encourage Russia? Is he beholden to Putin? Mueller never says.

Collusion isn’t a crime, except when it is. Mueller’s easiest cases pertained to laws barring foreign donations to or expenditures on American political campaigns. The infamous Trump Tower meeting hosted by Donald Trump Jr., and Paul Manafort’s serial sharing of polling data from swing states with a man linked to Russian intelligence, are prime targets. Mueller says he didn’t bring charges because he couldn’t establish the value of the intel, or that the likely defendants knew the law.

Leave it to Congress to make ignorance of the law a defense to political crimes. Some say Don Jr.’s ignorance of politics makes him hard to go after. The problem may be Mueller’s ignorance of politics. The value of the intel? A pearl beyond price, worth many multiples of the $25,000 felony threshold. Knowledge of the law? Manafort has spent his whole adult life evading laws on foreign influence peddling. Donald Trump Jr. has spent his life peddling influence around the world. Of course they knew.

Mueller doesn’t know because he never asked. His report contains the sentence, “Donald Trump Jr. declined to be voluntarily interviewed.” Really? And then what happened? From Trump Sr., Mueller accepted written responses delivered through lawyers. The first seven were versions of “I don’t recall,” as were most of the rest. Manafort just lied.

Mueller is often praised for not leaking to the press. I wish he had. If word had gotten out that he thought a Justice Department memo meant he couldn’t complete his assignment, or that he doubted Manafort and Trump Jr. grasped the import of their misdeeds, it would have caused such a storm he might have changed course.

Democrats don’t criticize Mueller partly out of fear Republicans will say they turned on him for disagreeing with them. But in his views of Trump, Mueller’s closer to them than to his Republican brethren. Democrats seethe because Mueller left the country in the lurch. Mueller’s a patriot. So’s Obama. Yet both let the powerful slip the noose. As Maher would say, time for new rules.

Some have called Mueller’s report an impeachment “road map.” It isn’t. Maps give directions and don’t come redacted. For anyone mounting a defense of our elections, it does provide a superb précis of Russian subversion strategies. It also tells you all you need to know about obstruction of justice. But impeachment should go places Mueller didn’t. Besides obstruction, charges should include:

Collusion

Mueller confined himself to possible charges of criminal conspiracy, but there can be no doubt Trump’s standing invitations to foreign subversion are impeachable. Our founders would deem his actions treasonous. Some legal scholars say treason can only occur when a foreign power formally declares war on us, but as with that immunity memo, no language in the Constitution, the federal statute on treason or any holding of the Supreme Court supports their view. Would anyone say a surprise attack on our electric grid wasn’t an act of war? Is an attack on our democracy less of one? Trump has taken to accusing the FBI of treason, once again projecting his sins onto others. We should take the word back, but whatever we call it, voters will see it as our founders would see it, as treason.

Corruption

There’s no more powerful issue in today’s world than corruption. In every poll that includes it, voters call it the problem they care about most because it’s the one that keeps all their other problems from ever getting solved. Trump’s surely the most corrupt president we’ve ever had. His most recent competitors for the title, Richard Nixon and Warren G. Harding, can’t touch him. His administration is a ceaseless tableau of venality and greed. To neglect to impeach him for corruption would be an unconscionable oversight.

Lying

On April 26, the Washington Post feted Donald Trump on an astonishing achievement: Ten thousand lies or misleading statements in 826 days as president. He’s the most prolific liar in the history of American politics; the easiest to spot, hardest to shame. The most pernicious too. No democracy can survive the normalization of lying. Nixon and Clinton were both impeached for it. Do we care enough about lying to impeach a president for it today? We’re in deep trouble if we don’t.

Impeachment is rife with risk. As we saw with Brett Kavanaugh, Democrats don’t know how to comport themselves in hearings; how to defend themselves; how to prosecute a case in unison rather than profile for the cameras. Many urge them to focus on a broader agenda, more relevant to voters’ lives. Good luck getting the media to focus on anything other than Trump. Democrats are producing decent legislation now, but with Mitch McConnell declaring everything DOA in the Senate, no one’s watching. As long as Trump’s in office, all politics will be about him.

The Democrats’ worst fear is that hearings fail to stir the public and that facing not only likely Senate acquittal but public resistance they’re left at the end with no choice but to surrender. They underestimate both their present case and what an inquiry into the long criminal enterprise that is the life of Donald Trump will surely add to it.

They also underestimate the risk of inaction: a dejected base, a public more easily misled by Trump’s bellows of “No obstruction! No collusion!” And they can count on McConnell to provide the political cover they need and a less awkward segue than they fear. A readymade slogan works on many levels: “Senate Republicans won’t impeach Donald Trump — but on Nov. 3, you can!”

The Iraq war and the Great Recession were the worst shocks to our system of recent times. We see the effects of our failure to hold the culprits to account. As I write, National Security Adviser John Bolton, a key member of the Iraq cabal, maneuvers the nation into war with Iran. Had we conducted an investigation like the Chilcot Inquiry, Bolton would be no more able than Tony Blair to steer us toward war. Mick Mulvaney spends parts of his days dismembering the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Had we prosecuted Wall Street fraud, his job would be harder. Last week we saw the effects of Mueller’s dereliction as Trump invited further foreign subversion, casually telling George Stephanopoulos he’d commit the very felonies with which Mueller failed to charge Manafort and Don Jr.

Pelosi’s notion of leaving Trump’s case to law enforcement is seductive, but even if Democrats win in 2020, one easily imagines a President-elect Joe Biden doing for Trump what Obama did for Bush and Cheney. If Pelosi punts, John Roberts becomes the new Bob Mueller; the high-minded Republican Democrats pin their hopes on. It’s enough to trigger Bush v. Gore flashbacks, even before you factor in all the Trump judges now infesting the courts with ideology and partisanship.

Donald Trump has hurt America more than the Wall Street meltdown, or even the Iraq war. His attacks on the rule of law threaten our democratic way of life. People who fear overuse of the word “treason” recoil even more from the word “fascist.” It is radioactive, owing to its connection to the word “Nazi.” But Trump checks every box for fascism, as surely as he does for “narcissistic personality disorder.” He’s no Hitler, but he’s long since put Juan Perón in his rearview mirror and he’s gaining on Mussolini. It’s a far more accurate label for Trump than “authoritarian.” It has the added benefit of letting his supporters know which team they’re suiting up for — and for conveying the magnitude of the present crisis, there’s nothing like it.

The political system we purport to cherish is under mortal threat. We need our own Chilcot Inquiry, in which every witness appears, every document is produced, every interview is conducted in public and the final report goes straight to the American people. The lesson of the Mueller report is that a Democratic House of Representatives is the only means we have left. We need an impeachment inquiry and we need it now. Bob Mueller threw away his shot. Everything now rides on Nancy Pelosi not throwing away hers.

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is it b/c books are last bastion of filter/st'ds?

wow th nelson

https://mytnnews.com/blog/2012/08/10/thomas-nelson-drops-jefferson-lies-book-over-historical-errors/

Nashville-based Thomas Nelson Publishers has canceled a controversial best-seller by David Barton, an influential evangelical leader, because the book contains historical errors.

Barton’s book, “The Jefferson Lies,” claims to expose liberal myths about Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence and the nation’s third president.

But a group of conservative scholars says Barton’s take on Jefferson is factually untrue. And a group of ministers from Cincinnati called on Nelson to cancel the book.

Casey Francis Harrell, director of corporate communications for Thomas Nelson, said the publisher had gotten several complaints about the book and found enough errors to cancel it.

“Because of these deficiencies, we decided that it was in the best interest of our readers to cease its publication and distribution,” Harrell said.

Barton stands by his book and said Nelson never mentioned any concerns about the book, which was published in April and made the New York Times best-seller list.

“All I got was an email saying it was canceled,” he said. “It was a complete surprise.”

The book is still available for sale at Amazon. com and other retailers. But Harrell said the publisher has stopped any new shipments and is recalling the book from retailers. Online retailers have been asked to stop selling the e-book version.

‘Extremely rare’

Harrell said that to her knowledge Thomas Nelson has never before canceled publication of a New York Times best-seller.

“We carefully edit every book we publish, and we rely on the expertise of our authors concerning their subjects,” she said. “It is extremely rare that the company would have to withdraw a book from the market based on concerns about its content.”

The publisher hasn’t decided what to do with the recalled books.

Barton is president of WallBuilders, an Aledo, Texas-based conservative group that says it wants to reclaim America’s forgotten Christian history.

An early press release for the book, put out by Thomas Nelson in May, portrayed Barton as battling revisionist history to tell Jefferson’s true story.

“History books routinely teach that Jefferson was an anti-Christian secularist, rewriting the Bible to his liking, fathering a child with one of his slaves, and little more than another racist, bigoted colonist — but none of those claims are actually true,” the press release claimed.

Warren Throckmorton, a psychology professor at Grove City College in Grove City, Pa., said it’s Barton who actually twisted the facts.

Throckmorton is co-author of “Getting Jefferson Right,” a book that criticizes Barton. It was released as an e-book in May and then later in paperback.

Throckmorton said he’d been concerned about Barton’s version of American history for several years. He and his co-author looked at Barton’s sources, “and we found they didn’t support what he wrote,” he said.

For example, Barton claims Jefferson was an investor in an early American printing of the Bible, when Throckmorton says Jefferson only bought one copy.

Barton wrote that Virginia laws banned Jefferson from freeing the more than 200 slaves he owned.

“That’s not true,” Throckmorton said. “Jefferson freed two slaves, one in 1794 and one in 1796. So you can’t say he didn’t free slaves, because he did free two slaves.”

Barton said Throckmorton is wrong. He said he has documents to back up all the claims in his book.

For example, he said the laws in Jefferson’s time fined owners who freed slaves, and Jefferson would have freed his slaves if he could have. He said Throckmorton doesn’t understand how complex the laws about freeing slaves were.

Slavery claim sparks protest

The claim about slavery caused a group of ministers from several Cincinnati churches to call for Thomas Nelson to drop the book.

“‘The Jefferson Lies’ glosses over Jefferson’s real record on slaveholding, and minimizes Jefferson’s racist views,” said the Rev. Damon Lynch of New Jerusalem Baptist Church, an African-American congregation in Cincinnati.

Lynch said he and other ministers from diverse backgrounds had contacted Nelson about their concerns. He said that if the book hadn’t been canceled, he would have boycotted Nelson.

“We love Thomas Nelson,” he said. “My library is filled with Thomas Nelson books, and I didn’t want to stop doing business with them.”

Throckmorton is not Barton’s only conservative critic.

World Magazine, run by former George W. Bush adviser Marvin Olasky, recently published an online news story about conservative historians who also think Barton made errors.

One was Glenn Moots, professor of political science at Northwood University in Michigan. He said Barton was well-intentioned but should have been more careful to get the details right.

“It doesn’t help any of us if the story isn’t told in an accurate manner,” he said.

Barton said he met with a different group of scholars recently and they approved of his work.

“I can’t tell you how many Ph.D.s were in the room,” he said. He would not give names, saying the scholars hadn’t given permission for him to do so.

He also said other publishers had made offers on his book and he hopes to sign a new contract soon.

The book’s cancellation disappointed Barton’s local fans. He was in Nashville in March to speak to about 250 people at a meeting of the 912 Project.

Janice Johnson said she’s heard Barton speak several times and bought an audio copy of “The Jefferson Lies.” She hopes the controversy won’t undermine his credibility.

“He’s usually so rock solid on history,” she said

Written by

Bob Smietana

The Tennessean

==

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https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/fox-news-actually-apologizes-after-texas-congressman-goes-anti-semitic-rant

no lnx

Fox News actually apologizes after Texas congressman goes on anti-Semitic rant

In a truly tortured segue, Gohmert connected George Orwell to another George—Soros. Get it?

By Walter Einenkel / Daily Kos December 7, 2018, 6:20 AM GMT

Fox Business’s Stuart Varney, a man that somehow makes Piers Morgan sound less smarmy, had wildly dumb Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert on his show Thursday morning. Varney was hosting a segment about how the tech giant Google has been willing to be complicit in the Chinese government’s censorship of the internet in order to penetrate the Chinese marketplace. Attacking Google for its complete lack of ethics is totally warranted, but of course the reason that Fox News is attacking Google is in order to build the vilification of China, justifying Trump’s incoherent trade while attacking a company perceived as being “liberal.” Rep. Louie Gohmert is sort of like having a drug-fueled 1970s rock-and-roll legend on your show—sure they’re narcissistic and terribly erratic asshats, but they will likely make for some entertaining television.

Gohmert makes a clearly well-worn and on-brand right-wing conspiracy joke about George Orwell. He then explains how Google has “literally sold their souls” to China. Classic rock god antics! Literally! Of course, the problem with putting an erratic and unsophisticated mind and mouth in front of a microphone is that, so very frequently, they veer off into truly insane (and thinly-veiled) anti-Semitic conspiracy theory.

In a truly tortured segue, Gohmert connected George Orwell to another George—Soros. Get it?

Gohmert: You mention Orwell, it reminds me of another George, ah George Soros. Because Google is born in a free country and they go over and oppress others, help oppress others in another country. George Soros is supposed to be Jewish but you wouldn't know it from the damage he inflicted on Israel and the fact that he turned on fellow Jews & helped take the property that they owned.

Varney quickly moved on, probably afraid that Gohmert would pull out his Glenn Beck blackboard to begin drawing lines between Hitler, the Rothschilds, George Soros, and black ops helicopters. If Louie Gohmert has a “brand,” it’s called “Batshit Crazy.” But the awfulness of the claim, so grotesquely wedged into a conversation about China, clearly stuck in someone’s craw at Fox Business, and according to the Daily Beast, Varney made an on-air apology later in the segment.

In the following broadcast hour, Varney issued an on-air apology for Gohmert’s remarks: “Congressman Louie Gohmert, for some reason went out of his way to bring up George Soros and made unsubstantiated and false allegations against him. I want to make clear those views are not shared by me, this program or anyone at Fox Business.”

This isn’t the first, second, or last time he’s publicly promoted the abhorrent George Soros as a Nazi collaborator meme. But here’s a quick primer on George Soros:

When World War II began, and Jews were swept up into camps, with more than 6 million ending up systematically murdered by the Third Reich. George Soros was 9-year-old Jew living in Hungary with his family when the war began. Soros was 14 years old when the Nazis occupied Hungary, and his family forged false identification papers and split up, in order to escape being sent to a Nazi concentration camp. Soros and his father forged similar papers for other Hungarian Jews during that time, before leaving the country and relocating in England.

The erroneous meme about Soros that has taken off in right wing circles originated with Glenn Beck—back when he was the heinous Glenn Beck we all remember. An old 60 Minutes interview with Soros shows him explaining how, at 14—charged with pretending he was the Christian child of an Hungarian officer—he had to watch as Hungarian and Nazi officials stole away the property of Jewish citizens who had been sent to their likely deaths in concentration camps.

None of us can know how we would have responded under the kinds of circumstances people like George Soros were put in as children—and adults—during World War II. But I will bet you another blue wave in 2020 that at 14, Louie Gohmert would have sold his family to the devil to keep his hair.

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rww

, the Media Research Center will now be “fact-checking the fact-checkers”: “In an era of ‘fake news’ and inaccurate reporting, it is important now more than ever that the fact-checkers themselves are exposed for their biases. MRC routinely finds instances when fact-checkers bend the truth or disproportionately target conservatives. We are assigning our own rating to their judgments and will expose the worst offenders.”

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ON SOCIAL MEDIA, "GOOD HYGIENE" CORRECTION WITH LINKS TO LEGIT SRC/INFO ACTUALLY AMPLIFIES MISINFORMATION?! EG

http://www.alternet.org/media/how-misinformed-tweet-was-manufactured-major-right-wing-news

 Buzzfeed News analysis found that the top 20 fake political news stories in circulation during the election got more clicks, views, shares and reactions on Facebook than the top 20 real news stories. The vast majority of those fake stories—all but three—were “overtly pro-Donald Trump or anti-Hillary Clinton,” meaning they pinged around the conservative webosphere, where they were accepted without question by millions and then passed to the next gullible consumer.

Paul Horner, among the most prolific and successful fake news writers, recently told the Washington Post that Trump voters and other “right-wing Republicans” were almost single-handedly responsible for the $10,000 he pulls in every month, because they “post everything, believe anything,” and continue to share fake news even when they find out it isn't true. That might explain why so many fake news stories seem specially tailored for the conservative news reader.

One of Horner’s most popular stories was a fabricated interview with a made-up person who said he’d been paid to protest Trump ahead of the election. During the campaign, multiple members of Trump’s team retweeted the story, even though many sources pointed out it wasn't true. The ludicrous idea that anti-Trump demonstrators are each paid thousands of dollars by billionaire George Soros—who plays a starring role in pretty much every right-wing conspiracy—has now become conservative gospel.

Eric Tucker, a marketer in Austin, Texas, was probably very familiar with this rumor when he recently sent an erroneous tweet that launched a viral right-wing story.The New York Times decided to examine how Tucker's tweet became a major topic of conservative discussion, following its online travels step by step. On the evening of November 9, just as protests against President-elect Trump were erupting all over the country, Tucker tweeted the photo and message below to his tiny group of 40followers. 

[img]

According to the Times, Tucker heard about anti-Trump demonstrations in Austin hours after he saw the buses in the photo, and for reasons that aren’t entirely clear (except that if you look for boogeymen everywhere you will find them), assumed a connection between the two. The Times confirmed that Tucker’s photo actually features buses booked for employees of Tableau Software, which was having a conference in the city. (Tucker told the Times he did a search for nearby conferences but didn’t find anything.) Roughly four hours after the original tweet went out, it ended up :{on :(style="background-color:#ffffff;"):}::{Reddit:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}:. “BREAKING: They found the buses!” the header reads. “Dozens lined up just blocks away from the Austin protests.” The thread of comments that follow indicate subreddits full of Trump supporters who, riding high on an election victory, are ecstatic to have a new conspiracy they can hang on the left.

“Alex Jones is based in Austin,” one commenter declares. “Let him know, and his crew can check it out.”

That’s followed by a lot of wishing the worst on Soros, complaints about “cucks,” suggestions thatJames O’Keefe get involved, and a lot of assumptions rooted in racism and paranoia. “Busing in violent mobs? Please tell me how this isn't inciting treason,” one person demands. This inexplicably devolves into a conversation about Obamaphones.

By the morning of November 10, the story appeared on right-wing message board Free Republic, where a user linked back to the original tweet. Here’s the point at which things quickly build momentum, picking up the pace across right-wing echo chambers. According to the Times, that same day, “Facebook pages like Robertson Family Values, which is named for but not affiliated with the stars of ‘Duck Dynasty,’ and Donald Trump Commander in Chief 2020, linked to the Free Republic discussion.” A Times screengrab of a Free Republican Facebook post repeating the Reddit message shows 307,616 shares. The paper also cites 5,000 shares of each of the aforementioned blog posts.

By now, the story had trickled upward to local news outlets. When the Austin-based affiliate for Fox called Coach USA North America bus companyto get more information, they were told by spokesperson Sean Hughes that the company wasn’t involved in any protests. Hughes even sent the station a statement clarifying that buses were in town "for a conference” and that “at no point were Coach USA buses involved in the Austin protests." The television station’s website, now empty of most of the content that appeared there, still features photos of the buses taken by Tucker, with a caption that poses thisleading question: “Were tens of thousands of protesters across the U.S. paid to walk the streets, hold signs, and chant anti-Trump sayings?”

That evening, Gateway Pundit, a major conservative blog, posted a story with the headline, “Figures. Anti-Trump Protesters Were Bussed in to Austin #FakeProtests.” They used Tucker’s original pictures, and according to the Times, linked the nonexistent busloads of fake protesters to “Soros money.” Three hours later, President-elect Trump or someone on his team took to social media to tweet about the fake story to his 16 million followers.

“Just had a very open and successful presidential election,” the message reads. “Now professional protesters, incited by the media, are protesting. Very unfair!”

As of this writing, the tweet has more than 71,000 retweets and 240,000 likes.

[img]

On November 11, a spokesperson for Tableau, the tech company that rented the buses for its conference attendees, sent a statement to the Austin American-Statesman. The newspaper, in turn, published an article debunking Tucker’s original tweet and all of the stories that followed. Included was an interview withEric Tucker, who praised Alex Jones and stated, “I think that it is necessary for us to risk sometimes being wrong to help develop moving the dialogue forward.”

Later in the day, according to the Times,Tucker sent a tweet that acknowledged the possibility his first suggestion may have been “flat wrong.” There was alsoa Snopes article declaring the rumor false. Instead of stopping the fake news dead in its tracks, the case essentially turned into proof that "a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes," as the old saying goes. Also, the internet loves a lie that supports its political agenda. According to the Times, “Mr. Tucker’s initial tweet continued to generate thousands of shares on Facebook through Free Republic and pages like Right Wing News and Joe the Plumber.”

[IMMUNE TO CORRECTION]

On the night of November 11, Tucker put up the tweet below, which shows his original message updated to carry a bright red “FALSE” across it. The corrected tweet, as of this writing, has a paltry 60 retweets and 66 likes. He told the Times that moving forward, "I can assure you I’m going to try my best to be balanced with the facts and be very clear about what is opinion and what is not." He also said that knowing what he knows now, he “might have still tweeted it but very differently. I think it goes without saying I would have tried to make a more objective statement.”

The same night, Tucker finally trashed the tweet that started it all. While that’s been scrubbed from social media, its impact isn’t going anywhere. Neither, coincidentally, is President-elect Donald Trump.

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retraction watch sorta ok?  forbes pulled miller chassy (natrev got sued by mann?)

Unearthed emails: Monsanto connected to campaign to retract GMO paper

with 14 comments

A trove of internal documents from Monsanto, recently unsealed in a lawsuit against the agricultural biotech giant, has revealed the firm’s role in the knotty tale of a paper from the lab of a scientist known for his stance against genetically modified organisms (GMOs).

That paper is “:{Long term toxicity of a Roundup herbicide and a Roundup-tolerant genetically modified maize:(style="padding:0px;margin:0px"):}:,” published in September 2012 in the journalFood and Chemical Toxicology(FCT) and :{retracted in January 2014:(style="padding:0px;margin:0px"):}:. :{Gilles Seralini:(style="padding:0px;margin:0px"):}:, a scientist known for an adversarial stance towards GMOs, was first author. The documents have also spurred the retraction of several pro-GMO articles on Forbes.com written by Henry Miller, a fellow at the Hoover Institution, a conservative think tank at Stanford University. Emails showed that one of the articles, which didn’t discuss Seralini’s paper, was ghostwritten by Monsanto.

The :{documents:(style="padding:0px;margin:0px"):}:, posted last week by the law firm of Baum, Hedlund, Aristei and Goldman, show Monsanto engaged with a network of scientists and other commentators to spread the message that the Seralini paper was bad science and should be retracted. Seralini told Retraction Watch that this proves what he has been saying all along, that Monsanto led a concentrated effort to discredit his science and protect its bottom line. He said:

I deduced from the beginning that it was organized….

But the effort to counteract Seralini’s work was not one-sided. [what?! huh logic?] Bruce Chassy, at the time a professor at the University of Illinois, now retired, told us he approached Monsanto to ask if they would act as allies “in the fight against the abuse of science,” in the form of anti-GMO research that he believed to be shoddy. He said that he has been critical of Monsanto’s business practices, but thinks they hire good scientists and are thus a good source of information on GMOs:

If I can use Monsanto to get science a fair hearing, I’ll do it. Since they know more about this than anybody else, they’re the people to go to.

Monsanto tried to ensure that the campaign to retract the 2012 paper wouldn’t be linked back to the company. On Sept. 26, 2012 — a week after the paper came out, :{Eric Sachs, a Monsanto executive, wrote several colleagues:(style="padding:0px;margin:0px"):}: to emphasize:

We have done our part. It is time now for the public sector and especially our network of experts to do theirs…

Monsanto must not be put in the position of providing the critical analysis that leads the editors to retract the paper… There is a difference between defending science and participating in a formal process to retract a publication that challenges the safety of our products.

To achieve this, Monsanto coordinated with the scientists mentioned in the documents on what to say in response to and how to maximize the impact of the response. Based on the documents obtained, that took the form of published articles, including letters to the editor of FCT, at least one of which called for retraction.

A contentious paper

Seralini should be no stranger to our regular readers — controversy has followed the 2012 paper at almost every turn, from the irregular methods Seralini used to promote it to the media (such as asking some journalists to sign a non-disclosure agreement to see it in advance of publication) to initial publication in FCT. Even after it was retracted, it was republished in 2014 — by a journal that :{didn’t subject it to peer review:(style="padding:0px;margin:0px"):}:. The FCT version has been cited 54 times since it was retracted, and 95 in total, according to Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science, earning it Clarivate’s “highly cited paper” designation.

In a :{statement issued:(style="padding:0px;margin:0px"):}: after the retraction, Seralini accused Monsanto of promoting criticisms of the paper and installing a former employee on the FCT editorial board.

While the documents highlight close ties between Monsanto and at least four people who criticized the study, plenty of scientists criticized the paper’s scientific merits in both the :{mainstream:(style="padding:0px;margin:0px"):}: and :{academic:(style="padding:0px;margin:0px"):}: press. Still, the decision to retract was as contentious as the decision to publish. An FCT investigation found no evidence of fraud, misconduct, or gross error, which are required by Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines for retraction; however, FCT cited COPE guidelines in their :{retraction notice:(style="padding:0px;margin:0px"):}: anyway.

As our co-founder Ivan Oransky :{told :(style="padding:0px;margin:0px"):}:*:{CBS News:(style="padding:0px;margin:0px"):}:* in 2014, after the paper was :{republished:(style="padding:0px;margin:0px"):}: in a different journal:

This whole episode has taken us farther away from knowing the truth …

This is a good example of what happens when people with hardened beliefs manipulate a system for the result they want …

:{

}:

“We are ‘connected’ but did not write the letter”

The :{documents show that Monsanto was in contact with Chassy:(style="padding:0px;margin:0px"):}:, who wrote several pieces attacking Seralini’s paper. On Sept. 25, 2012, Chassy :{co-authored an article with Henry Miller:(style="padding:0px;margin:0px"):}:, the fellow at the conservative think tank, which Miller published in his capacity as a Forbes.com contributor. The article suggested that Seralini had gone beyond “bad science” and into fraud. That article and two other posts from Miller related to GMOs have since been removed from Forbes.com, but are available through the internet archive (one, :{co-written with Chassy:(style="padding:0px;margin:0px"):}:, criticized an earlier 2012 Seralini paper; the other was :{ghost-written by Monsanto:(style="padding:0px;margin:0px"):}: itself in 2015).

Mia Carbonell, senior VP of global communications at Forbes, told Retraction Watch that it has pulled down all of Miller’s articles on its site, because he violated the terms of his contract:

All contributors to Forbes.com sign a contract requiring them to disclose any potential conflicts of interest and only publish content that is their own original writing.  When it came to our attention that Mr. Miller violated these terms, we removed all of his posts from Forbes.com and ended our relationship with him.

Both Miller and Chassy said they weren’t involved in the decision to take down the Forbes articles and that they disagreed with the decision. Miller told us that, like Chassy, he has “sought information from [Monsanto] …on scientific issues when I thought they had information of value.” He said he does not have a financial connection to Monsanto. Chassy said that he has never personally accepted money from Monsanto, although his university did [see update].

One day after the Forbes.com article ran, Chassy sent FCT Editor-in-chief A. Wallace “Wally” Hayes a :{strongly-worded email:(style="padding:0px;margin:0px"):}: in which he said the journal had an “ethical obligation” to retract the paper.

Chassy was also :{one of 25 co-authors of a formal letter to the editor:(style="padding:0px;margin:0px"):}: of the FCT that called for the paper’s retraction. (The letter has not been cited.) In September 2012, as the letter was being drafted, a Monsanto staff member asked about the company’s involvement with it and expressed hesitation about whether the company should even disclose its knowledge of the letter to investors. :{Sachs wrote:(style="padding:0px;margin:0px"):}::

We are “connected” but did not write the letter or encourage anyone to sign it.

As :{reported by the :(style="padding:0px;margin:0px"):}:*:{New York Times:(style="padding:0px;margin:0px"):}:*, Hayes himself had a :{“contractual relationship” with Monsanto:(style="padding:0px;margin:0px"):}: while he was editor of FCT. Hayes, now an adjunct professor at the University of Massachusetts, told the Times he was not under contract with Monsanto when the paper was retracted and that his relationship played “no role whatsoever” in that decision. However, Hayes was i:{n contact with Monsanto executives soon after the paper came out:(style="padding:0px;margin:0px"):}:, offering advice on what they might round up to submit to him as rebuttal.

The docs also :{reveal ties between Monsanto and Colin Berry,:(style="padding:0px;margin:0px"):}: a British toxicologist, who published his own letter in FCT criticizing the paper. On Sept. 20, 2012, the day after FCT published the Seralini paper, :{Berry emailed David Saltmiras:(style="padding:0px;margin:0px"):}:, his contact at Monsanto, to ask:

Have you seen this? I have been asked to comment asap – anything you want to say[?]

Saltmiras replied:

I hope scientist of your caliber and standing may consider penning a joint letter to the Editor focusing on scientific deficiencies and the flawed scientific review process.

A third scientist, :{Andrew Cockburn:(style="padding:0px;margin:0px"):}:, a toxicology consultant who at the time was a visiting professor at UK’s University of Newcastle, was also on the email chain and chimed in:

…if you can provide the ammunition I’d be happy to respond …

Monsanto did not respond to Retraction Watch’s request for comment.

Sachs, the Monsanto executive, realized the risks of attacking the decision to publish the paper and call for retraction. On Sept. 26, as he insisted it should not be Monsanto to swing the axe, he wrote:

We should not provide ammunition for Seralini, [genetic modification] critics and the media to charge that Monsanto used its might to get this paper retracted.

Update 8/11/2017 UTC 14:30:

Bruce Chassy told us that he had never personally received money from Monsanto; however, several readers have pointed out that he has in fact accepted thousands of dollars from Monsanto, routed through the University of Illinois Foundation and nominally slated for “outreach” to avoid scrutiny. A Chicago Public Radio investigation from March 2016 showed:

Monsanto sent more than $140,000 in “biotech research and outreach” payments through the University of Illinois Foundation between 2006 and June 2012, the month Chassy retired. Further documents confirm that at least $57,000 was routed to Chassy over a period of 23 months.

And a *New York Times* article from September 2015 said that in 2011 Monsanto gave Chassy a grant for an undisclosed amount “to support ‘biotechnology outreach and education activities.’”

==

https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/fox-news-viewers-melt-down-after-shep-smith-blows-latest-hillary-conspiracy-theory

uranium one

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==

Because science is transparent, it is also self-correcting. Researchers can interrogate, criticize and improve upon each others' work. In 2013, Thomas Herndon, a graduate student at the University of Massachusetts made headlines when he found a number errors in an influential study authored by two Harvard economists. The paper showed that economic growth slows down in countries with high national debt, and it was used to justify austerity measures following the Great Recession. Herndon, 28, published a paper which called attention to the errors and refuted its conclusions about national debt.

This is how research works. Researchers evaluate and attempt to replicate the findings of their peers. They have every incentive to prove each other wrong. Herndon's work earned him the acclaim of serious economists, weeks of fawning press coverage and a star turn on The Colbert Report.Any person who could do the same for climate research would be similarly celebrated.

==

Fact checking as a countermeasure to disinformation is practiced by both mainstream and alternative media outlets. Hundreds of fact-checks were published during the Brexit referendum and in the US elections this year. However, none of those checks seemed to matter significantly. As discussed broadly, one reason might be that our polarized social networks increasingly constrain us to live in our own constructed realities, which are reinforced by recommender systems and news feeds curated by black-box algorithms. Filter bubbles on social media are more real than ever, as demonstrated by Gilad Lotan’s meticulous analysis of how bubbles are being developed on Twitter, and MIT Media Lab’s Lab for Social Machines’ mapping of how Trump and Clinton supporters live in their own Twitter worlds. Moreover, even if the facts are aroused enough to leave an echo chamber, moving from one isolated social cluster to another, they evaporate rapidly as a result of organized trolling.

==

POSTER?

CF Correction: epa blew frack call b/c bound by superfund regs? nb desmog role

Back in 2012, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) made a startling announcement, shaking up the battle over fracking in one of the nation’s highest-profile cases where drillers were suspected to have caused water contamination.

Water testing results were in for homeowners along Carter Road in Dimock, Pennsylvania, where for years, homeowners reported their water had turned brown, became flammable or started clogging their well with “black greasy feeling sediment” after Cabot Oil and Gas began drilling in the area. The EPA seemed to conclude the water wasn’t so bad after all.

“The sampling and an evaluation of the particular circumstances at each home did not indicate levels of contaminants that would give EPA reason to take further action,” EPA Regional Administrator Shawn M. Garvin said in a press release.

The drilling industry crowed. “The data released today once again confirms the EPA’s and DEP’s [Department of Environmental Protection] findings that levels of contaminants found do not possess a threat to human health and the environment,” Cabot said in a statement.

“It’s obviously very good news for the folks who actually live there and pretty squarely in line with what we’ve known up there for a while now,” Energy in Depth told POLITICOPro. “It’s not very good news for the out-of-state folks who have sought to use Dimock as a talking point in their efforts to prevent development elsewhere, but I’m sure they’ll be working hard over the weekend to spin it differently, notwithstanding the pretty clear statement made by EPA today.”

Now, a newly published report by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry(ATSDR), part of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), puts EPA’s testing results into an entirely new light.

The water was not safe to drink after all, the ATSDR concluded, after a lengthy review of the same water testing results that EPA used back in 2012.

“ATSDR found some of the chemicals in the private water wells at this site at levels high enough to affect health (27 private water wells), pose a physical hazard (17 private water wells) or affect general water quality so that it may be unsuitable for drinking,” the ATSDR’s health consultation—launched in 2011 and published May 24—concludes.

The new report lists 10 contaminants, including arsenic, lithium and 4-chlorophenyl phenyl ether, that are “chemicals of health concern,” at the levels found in Carter Road wells, found that five homes were at “immediate risk of fire or explosion” because of methane in their water and another dozen showed lower, but still worrisome, levels of methane and found that the water was laced with elevated levels of metals, salts and total dissolved solids.

The underlying data isn’t new to the residents of Carter Road. The EPA provided it to them individually back in 2012, which is why the EPA’s announcement that the water was safe was so baffling at the time.

“I’m sitting here looking at the values I have on my sheet—I’m over the thresholds—and yet they are telling me my water is drinkable,” Nolan Scott Ely, one of the Carter Road homeowners, told ProPublica when EPA made its announcement. “I’m confused about the whole thing … I’m flabbergasted.”

Opposite Conclusions?

So how could two different agencies look at the exact same data and come to opposite conclusions?

“Although the same data set was used, the EPA as a regulatory agency specifically looked at whether or not it was required to take action under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act, more commonly known as Superfund, which governs responses to environmental emergencies,” StateImpact, a National Public Radio project, explained. “The ‘health consultation’ looked at the entire data set from a public health standpoint, assessing whether or not it was safe to drink the water.”

In other words, EPA’s findings, which seemed to show that the water was “safe” and which were promoted by drillers as proof that nothing was wrong in Dimock, instead represented a very carefully parsed legal finding that the water did not reach Superfund levels of contamination for the specific substances EPA focused on.

And the EPA’s 2012 findings had left out some of the very contaminants that had caused locals the most concern—including the natural gas or methane, itself. “EPA’s investigation does not include an evaluation of the risk posed by elevated levels of methane—which continue to exist in some homes in Dimock—and which, at extreme levels and if unaddressed, can lead to explosions,” Natural Resources Defense Council Senior Attorney Kate Sinding wrote in a blog post at the time.

The EPA’s strained official interpretation of the data perhaps shows why EPA staff remained concerned even after the agency dropped its Dimock investigation in July 2012, just months after its testing results had been announced in March and April.

In 2013, a Los Angeles Times investigation revealed that EPA’s own staff had disagreed with the agency’s public statements that the water shouldn’t be considered hazardous. An internal EPA Powerpoint presentation, later obtained and published by DeSmog, showed that agency scientists had concluded that the drilling and fracking process “apparently cause significant damage to the water quality.”

The ATSDR’s new report very specifically notes that it does not look at whether the water hazards stem from drilling or pre-date Cabot’s arrival in the area. In part, that’s because of a lack of pre-drilling testing for gas and other common fracking-related chemicals in the water. “It is important to note that methane was not assessed in residential water wells prior to the initiation of natural gas drilling activities in the Dimock area,” the ATSDR wrote.

Cabot Oil and Gas emphasized their belief that methane in the water was “naturally occurring” and pre-dated their arrival in a statement provided to StateImpact. “This data is consistent with thousands of pages of water data collected by both Cabot and the Pennsylvania DEP and does not indicate that those contaminants detected have any relationship to oil and gas development in Dimock,” Cabot said.

The ATSDR report does often note when substances discovered in the Carter Road water are known to be associated with hydraulic fracturing or drilling industry activities, but does not reach any conclusions about whether the chemicals came from Cabot’s operations.

“It’s not their job to look at who caused whatever contamination there is,” Bryce Payne, a Pennsylvania environmental scientist, told E&E News. “It’s their job to see if there are health implications. They did that and concluded there are health implications.”

The new report is also limited to data from four years ago—and conditions have changed, the ATSDR noted, in part because a state moratorium on fracking along Carter Road was briefly lifted after the EPA dropped its investigation and locals quickly reported more changes to their water, including higher levels of methane.

Cabot Oil Settles

In August 2012—right around the time that EPA abandoned its investigation—Cabot Oil and Gas announced it had settled the vast majority of lawsuits against it by Carter Road residents for an undisclosed amount of money and under terms that barred the plaintiffs from speaking negatively about their experiences with the company.

This March, a federal jury handed down a $4.24 million verdict to the remaining two Carter Road families, concluding that the water was in fact contaminated because of the negligence of the drilling company. Cabot has begun the process of appealing that verdict.

But while the legal filings and agency reports continue to stack up, the problem on Carter Road remains the same as it has for many years now.

While those who settled with Cabot had water treatment systems installed by the company, locals familiar with those systems say that even the treated water seems too contaminated to drink and the water treatment systems break down frequently.

The ATSDR’s report provides recommendations that water should have been treated to address dangerous contamination levels—but those recommendations are not binding and the agency noted that while the state government collected samples more recently, the ATSDR did not have access to the newer data.

Community organizers are still calling for the federal government to resume an active role, arguing that the groundwater remains undrinkable.

“We’re demanding that they reopen the investigation,” Craig Stevens, a local organizer, toldDeSmog after the March verdict was announced, “and also get water to these people.”

http://ecowatch.com/2016/06/03/dimock-water-unsafe-fracking/

unusual?

trms

Steve Benen 01/02/17 12:00PM

Claims about 'food-stamp fraud' completely fall apart

By Steve Benen

01/02/17 11:20AM

As Ari Melber noted on the show last week, Fox News aired a strange report, telling its viewers that "food-stamp fraud" has reached "an all-time high." Citing evidence from the Department of Agriculture, Fox said fraud in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program cost taxpayers $70 million in 2016.

"Is it time to end the program?" Fox asked, rhetorically.

It didn't take long before literally every detail of the report was discredited. Food-stamp fraud is not at an all-time high; the Department of Agriculture has not released any new data on this; there's no evidence that puts the price tag of fraud in the system at $70 million; and ending a social-insurance program over this is absurd.

The Department of Agriculture demanded a retraction. As The Hill noted, Fox obliged.

Fox News has retracted a Tuesday story that claimed "an all-time high" for food stamp fraud. "We reported that back in 2016 $70 [billion] were wasted on food stamp fraud," Fox News contributor Abby Huntsman said on Friday's "Fox and Friends."

"That was actually incorrect. The latest information from 2009 to 2011 shows the fraud at 1.3 percent, which is approximately $853 million for each of those three years. Nationally food stamp trafficking is on the decline. So sorry about that mistake."

That's the appropriate resolution, of course. We all make mistakes -- I've had to publish some corrections of my own over the years -- and it's encouraging this was straightened out fairly quickly.

I'm still curious, though, about how and why this bogus report aired in the first place.

read more

pale exception that proves the rule: scientist got interview removed from home DVD version of gt global warming swindle

On behalf of Lucky Strike, Bernays sought the advice of the psychoanalyst A.A. Brill. Brill's message to Bernays and the American Tobacco company was "freedom": sell cigarettes to women as a symbol of liberation.

Following this advice, Bernays staged a legendary publicity event that is still taught as an example in PR schools. He hired beautiful fashion models to march in New York's prominent Easter parade, each waving a lit cigarette and wearing a banner proclaiming it a "torch of liberty." Bernays made sure that publicity photos of his smoking models appeared world-wide.

To his credit, an older Bernays expressed regret at his work, saying if he'd known of the dangers of tobacco he would have refused the account. His admission and opinion remains rare among PR practioners.