If You're Looking For Truth You're Getting Conned-Podcast 639

If You’re Looking For Truth You’re Getting Conned-Podcast 639

Coverage of former FBI director Comey testifying forces a political podcast. As a result, a velvet summer midnight in Western Virginia is the backdrop for  If You’re Looking For Truth You’re Getting Conned-Podcast 639.

People Actually Watch This Crap?

Out here the Internet is slow. With no movie packages we’re stuck with reality shows, local news and lots of commercials. I’ve seen a lot of drug commercials. I’m getting a lot of screen time on my ‘device’ because of the long commercial breaks. You know, the device get-off-my-lawn types complain about. Time to blow off some steam In If You’re Looking For Truth You’re Getting Conned-Podcast 639.

The Mighty Wurlitzer

Do I have to say it again? Everyone is selling a point of view. Like a thickener for soup. Depending on who owns or funds one of these partisan ‘news’ websites, it’s their point of view sold through shares on social media. And why not? If you agree with something, share it. Right? Truth is those shares aren’t aren’t news. Not ‘fake news’. Propaganda. In If You’re Looking For Truth You’re Getting Conned-Podcast 639.

Believe Whatever You Want But It’s Not The Truth

For example. the ‘biased mainstream media’ reported the FBI was investigating Trump, right? Are the Hillary Clinton emails and the Russia hack question one and the same? Does the now famous Bill Clinton and Loretta Lynch conversation in the tarmac have anything to do with the Trump administration? Are you sure? How do you know?

Join Us As We Con America!

When you can’t tell the difference between the good stuff and formaldehyde and rubbing alcohol you take your life in your hands. Or so the story went in the 1920’s. As a result, we don’t know the difference between snake oil and snake oil.  Most of all, readers don’t fact check. We don’t know who funds these outlets. Eyeballs don’t google the author. Clicks. Shares. Numbers reached. Get your propaganda on twitter and Facebook. A majority of Americans get their news from social media. Especially relevant is the fact that Americans are being conned as never before. In If You’re Looking For Truth You’re Getting Conned-Podcast 639.

The End Of Politics In The United States?

Seems like we live on opposite shores of an ocean of opinion. Due to storms raging shore to shore, driven by outside forces seemingly beyond our control. As much as this may seem true the antidote is talking to each other. Especially relevant is the question, when was the last time you had coffee with someone to talk about solutions? Do we have discussions anymore about what actually works? Seems like our conversations are all about whether ‘we think’ this is or that is true. Furthermore, we live under brands and act as if our brand is the best. Are Republicans going make an already dangerous government less powerful. Moreover, who pays for minimum incomes and free health insurance, and free education Democrats promise? Meanwhile, a ‘conservative’ president pushes to borrow another trillion dollar stimulus for roads and bridges we don’t need.

Getting Nothing Done

Any analysis of the day’s news I might do inevitably leads to the conclusion very little coverage sheds much light on anything. On the contrary, it is designed to convince us to support a person or point of view. The bottom line is, while republicans have large majorities at most states and the federal level, they’re not getting much done while Democrats move further left every day.

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If You’re Looking For Truth You’re Getting Conned-Podcast 639

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Getting Your News Groove Back-Podcast 621

Social Media Rules

More of us get our news from social media these days. Problem is most of the ‘news’ on social media doesn’t adhere to standards. Might feel better informed, but it’s hard to tell the difference between writing to a standard and propaganda. In Getting Your News Groove Back-Podcast 621.

Internet Never Lies

People are in the habit of posting, sharing, liking and commenting on stories that support their point of view. People apparently believe anything published on the Internet that looks credible and comes from a site they visit often. We are floating on a sea of bad information.

Garbage In Garbage Out

News stories not written to standard assert things that turn out to be false. What’s worse, this kind of information poisons the discourse. Thoughts, insights and ideas based on bad information form into concrete assumptions and conclusions. Those conclusions drive people’s ideas about the world.

Propaganda and Manipulation

In Getting Your News Groove Back-Podcast 621 I’ll provide some examples of story-lines that have not been proven. Most of the time these stories reinforce the right versus left thinking that ruins friendships and family ties. It’s what makes social media so angry and vitriolic.

There are standards. When you know the standards you can determine whether a writer lives up to those standards. Without standards we’re susceptible to a steady stream of propaganda and manipulation. It’s up to us to learn the standards and choose what we post, share, like and comment on accordingly.

Context and Perspective

A steady diet of Social Media, 24 Hour Cable News and Talk Radio is like junk food for the mind. This ruins a person’s ability to discern whether assertions are true or just opinion. When all we do is read stuff online, watch You Tube videos and listen to cable news and talk radio we lose the context of major stories. We don’t get the details to be able to master the issues. Getting Your News Groove Back-Podcast 621  explains how to do that.

Getting Your News Groove Back-Podcast 621

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Podcast 588-Russians Coming!

 

CIA Report on Russian Hacking

On this week’s Bob Davis Podcast Radio Show, we’re back in a news rich environment. The release of the CIA Report on ‘Russian Hacking‘ adds to the latest tempest in a teapot. A skeptical President Elect Trump got a briefing from top intelligence officials in the Obama Administration last week. What does ‘Russia Hacks The US Election’ mean to you? Does it mean the Russians managed to get control of voting machines and change votes in key states. Decidedly no.

In Podcast 588-Russians Coming! The story goes, the Russians, under order from President Putin, hacked into the DNC through John Podesta’s email, gaining access to the server for months. The Obama administration also has been told by its US intelligence employees that the Russians were responsible for the release of sensitive material from the DNC severs to Wikileaks. Oh, and the Russia Today network put a new TV show on critical of Hillary Clinton. The Russians also apparently employed a number of Internet trolls in service to Donald Trump. Or something like that.

The subliminal message here is Americans have lost control of their political process and therefore should have no faith in its outcome, which oddly seems like the original goal of Russia’s alleged interference. Proving the Russians hacked into the DNC is hard enough to prove. Proving it had any effect on the election is quite another. One should never say never and skepticism should be the first approach for people who want to believe the Russian Hack story and those who do not. Still, there are reasons why this is one story that may never be proven. Find out why in Podcast 588-Russians Coming!

While Trump supporters remain skeptical, Clinton supporters have latched onto the Russian Hack story as the new grand conspiracy theory in all that ails America. However, if you’re looking for a smoking gun you may be waiting a long time. Like the famous WMD in Iraq story, when a president asks the intelligence community to ‘prove’ something, a ‘report’ will be issued. Reports issued because a president wants one, usually include a ‘preponderance‘ of evidence.

Remember how the CIA managed to convinced Congress and most of the people in the country going to war against Iraq was necessary? While the left attacked Bush and the CIA for its ‘preponderance of evidence of WMD’s in Iraq’ finding, suddenly they’re ready to believe the ‘Russia Hack’ story. Even though we all know how the WMD story turned out for George W. Bush, the left wonders how else Hillary Clinton’s loss could be explained. It had to be the Russians.

2016’s presidential race heralded a tectonic shift in politics in the United States and perhaps the world. How politics is conducted. How it is reported on. How races are measured and predicted. Considering this shift, is it impossible to suggest people in the great lakes region in 2016 reached the point where they were just fed up with politics as usual? Maybe the cozy relationship between big government types, Hollywood and Wall Street just got to be too much for the little guy? Bernie Sanders thinks so. Senator Sanders has called Clinton out for choosing to hang with Gentry-Liberals rather than campaigning in Wisconsin and Michigan in the final stretch when it might have made a difference.

Foreign involvement in the US political process is nothing new. During the effort to ratify the US Constitution, in an effort to support arguments for an indirect election of the President through the Electoral College, The Federalist talked about foreign involvement in US Presidential elections. Historian Barbara Tuchman wrote a book about British subterfuge to get the US into World War I. The Soviets attempted to influence US politics through the creation and promotion of the American Communist Party from the 1920’s on. During those early decades of the twentieth century, some American intellectuals thought the Soviets had solved the problems of industrialization. Some Americans were happy to move to the glorious Soviet Union.

Will the new president plan a reorganization of the United States’ far flung fleet of intelligence agencies? The OSS was originally tasked with the collection and interpretation of strategic information. After the National Security Act of 1947, the newly formed CIA took up the job with some additional responsibilities. Federal agencies tend to grow and morph from their original mandate as time goes on. The United States now has scores of intelligence agencies. Are we sure our Congress and President knows what these agencies actually do? Are we sure that our government can actually supervise intelligence services that have a long history of making serious mistakes?

What is this story obscuring right now? As we argue about the ‘preponderance of evidence’ linking a spear phishing scheme to the DNC servers, a scheme that succeeded because DNC officials who should have known better did not follow security procedures, politicians in Washington, our State Capitols and City Councils are stealing us blind.

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