Ali Velshi just now on MSNBC.

<sneezes>

"Pardon me! I'm allergic to the news!"

This quote from Thomas Jefferson showed up on my Facebook memories from six years ago.

Seems applicable to modern times.

"He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors."-Thomas Jefferson

"Happy birthday, Mr. President..." - Marilyn Monroe

An old tweet, but just as true now as it was when written.

Presidential Harassment

Why Fake News Is Fake

The following comes from a blog, the updates to which I occasionally get by email. Emphasis, where added, is mine.

Donald Trump was quick to deploy a familiar Fake News soundbite on his trip to the UK this week. When questioned in a press conference about the crowds in London who were protesting against his visit, his response was that he hadn’t seen the protests, and “a lot of it is fake news”.

It is increasingly obvious what Donald Trump means by the term Fake News – it means news that he disagrees with. There are countless examples of there being a documented fact on the one side and a condemnation of said fact as Fake News on the other, but there was something about the brazen dismissal of the protests, while the sound of them was audible during the press conference, which put the issue into technicolour. Dismissing something as false where there is immediate evidence that is is happening at the same time provokes the wider question of what the term actually means.

So Donald Trump says Fake News when what he means is news that opposes his world view, provided by the ‘Corrupt Media’, which is another one of his favourite Twitter go-to phrases. But it’s clever because for much of his base, I suspect this nuance is lost. When he says something is Fake, they take that on face value, and his world view is reinforced. It explains why he has a particular zeal when condemning something which is genuinely incorrect, as this can reinforce his wider usage. That probably explains this week’s overdone attack on Bette Midler as a “Washed up psycho” after she admitted tweeting out a Trump quote which wasn’t true. Seizing on instances of genuine Fake News allows the myth to be perpetuated that the instances of fakery are as widespread as the President would have us believe, and will add further belief to those who are prepared to take all of his utterances at face value.

And whatever daftness the President may spew out on Twitter, he will be well aware of how weaponising the term Fake News has allowed him to dismiss any or all attacks on him. He showed this week that he understands the value of words all too well. Speaking to Piers Morgan about climate change, he said: “I believe there’s a change in weather, and I think it changes both ways. Don’t forget, it used to be called global warming, that wasn’t working, then it was called climate change. Now it’s actually called extreme weather, because with extreme weather you can’t miss.” What he is doing here is attacking the notion of climate change by suggesting that people keep on changing how they refer to it so that they can get the message across, therefore suggesting that it isn’t actually real because scientists keep having to sell it with a different word. He dismisses the science of climate change by focusing the conversation on the presentation of it, rather than the facts behind it. It is a very clever demonstration of how to use language to make your point, and affirms to me that he knows exactly what he is doing with the term Fake News.

More at https://wordability.net/2019/06/09/why-fake-news-is-fake/

My country, tears of thee.

A prescient poem from Lawrence Ferlingetti, which he wrote in 2007.

“Pity The Nation”
Pity the nation whose people are sheep,
and whose shepherds mislead them.
Pity the nation whose leaders are liars, whose sages are silenced,
and whose bigots haunt the airwaves.
Pity the nation that raises not its voice,
except to praise conquerors and acclaim the bully as hero
and aims to rule the world with force and by torture.
Pity the nation that knows no other language but its own
and no other culture but its own.
Pity the nation whose breath is money
and sleeps the sleep of the too well fed.
Pity the nation — oh, pity the people who allow their rights to erode
and their freedoms to be washed away.
My country, tears of thee, sweet land of liberty.”

Only Trump can pack this much ignorance into a few words

By Eugene Robinson

Columnist
June 6 at 5:20 PM

<snip>

“The Kentuky [sic] Derby decision was not a good one. It was a rough and tumble race on a wet and sloppy track, actually, a beautiful thing to watch. Only in these days of political correctness could such an overturn occur. The best horse did NOT win the Kentucky Derby - not even close!”

Political correctness? About a horse? What’s wrong with the man?

Even more dangerous than Trump’s ignorance is the near-impossibility of changing his mind about certain things. It’s one thing to stick to one’s guns. It’s another thing to stubbornly resist fact and reason — especially when the stakes are so high.

Trump is apparently convinced that acknowledging Russia’s interference in the 2016 election — and taking action to prevent a recurrence — diminishes his victory. Some aides are reportedly not even raising the subject, perhaps out of fear of losing political standing with the president.

More at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/better-to-keep-ones-mouth-shut-than-to-sound-like--trump/2019/06/06/067b0b6e-8882-11e9-a870-b9c411dc4312_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.b91eb9566154

Somehow, I can't imagine Don The Dumpster Fire tweeting this.