Podcast 579-Internet Censorship

Podcast 579-Internet Censorship. The news media has a new story-line. Fake News Elected Donald Trump. We have to do something about fake news. It amounts to is censorship of the Internet. A violation of the right to free speech guaranteed by the US Constitution’s first amendment at least in spirt. What IS Fake News? I think of Fake News as False Narratives. Story lines seeded by politicians and corporate PR people. Narratives that are picked up and reported on by journalists who take down quotes for their stories rather than investigate and report. These story lines are picked up by more journalists who quote talking heads. Commentators commentate, more quotes and more stories until the narrative outlives its usefulness and then the whole thing starts over. Examples include explanations of why Trump won the election including, ‘Women voted for Trump instead of Hillary’. Another was the reporting on ‘What the Polls showed’ which usually meant Clinton was supposed to win. Facts in both cases debunked these claims. The definition of ‘Fake News’ we’re actually dealing with now are false stories presented as fact. You see them on You Tube, FaceBook and Twitter. But they are picked up by websites like Breitbart or Huffington Post if they fit a narrative. Since ‘fake news’ elected ‘a person like Trump’, Clinton backers are demanding social media and search engine companies like FaceBook and Google ‘do something about fake news’. In Podcast 579-Internet Censorship, we spend a little time explaining the American Political system, specifically the Electoral College. This explains how Donald Trump was able to eke out an electoral victory in key states, as well as a solid victory among the voters of Ohio, which gave him a victory in the presidential contest, regardless of popular vote totals, fair and square. There is virtually no evidence fake news had anything to do with these tight victories. If Clinton’s voters had actually voted in those states we’d be talking about a Clinton transition and Trump would be on a beach in the Caribbean somewhere. Despite the fact that Clinton has been a proponent of doing away with the electoral college for years, suddenly the hoary old institution is her best friend. We don’t know if anyone voted for Trump based on the Pizza Gate story, we can’t and we won’t. That doesn’t stop the left from putting immense pressure on FaceBook, the supposed culprit here in publishing so called fake news. What does Mark Zuckerberg the head of FaceBook do? He caves. A second story making the rounds in the alt-right community with headlines like, “We told you so” says they’re already censoring the Internet. Finally there have long been discussions in the national security and foreign policy community regarding censoring Islamic Jihad sites that radicalize followers. All three of these stories are being conflated right now online as though some imminent threat to free speech exists. Is there? Or are these companies simply formalizing procedures to suppress violent or illegal content that has been part of their service agreements? As a content creator the idea of ‘warning labels’ is chilling. The idea of some kind of algorithm to be defeated is chilling. That said, wouldn’t such procedures invite work arounds? Wouldn’t censorship invite efforts to defeat algorithms? Personally I don’t concern myself with speech control in countries that don’t have guarantees of free speech. I do care about attempts to limit speech in the United States where free speech is THE cornerstone of a successful representative republic and is constitutionally guaranteed in the first amendment. You can’t stop things you don’t agree with. As a content provider, this concerns me. Sponsored by X Government Cars and by Hydrus Performance.

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Podcast 577-Bob Davis Podcasts Radio Show-55

Podcast 577-Bob Davis Podcasts Radio Show-55. As the Trump Transition rolls on, it’s The Messiah Syndrome, Partisans Painting Themselves Into a Corner and False Narratives. Eight years ago people in this country thought Barack Obama would fix everything. Obama was a God. The new Messiah is Donald J. Trump. He is going to fix everything. He has been ‘chosen by God’. Trump ‘will be defended by God’. We ‘have to pray for him’. It’s always good to celebrate a victory, but the US Presidency is a political office. All the things that are supposed to get fixed become a question of what is possible with Congress, the Courts, the executive departments and the states playing a role. When it comes to political nuts and bolts Trump supporters and most republicans can’t be bothered. From day one Messiah Trump will be embroiled a political struggle. The clock is already ticking on the next congressional cycle in 2018. Gubernatorial campaigns are already underway in many states. Cabinet Secretaries and bureaucrats don’t come from central casting. Many of the people who end up filling those positions will not necessarily be ‘Trumpers’. Many of them are Washington Insiders. Then there are the many new voices on the so called right that have emerged in the last few years. Many of them wholeheartedly endorsed Trump and they will now have to defend him. Have they painted themselves into a corner? False Narratives are also spreading like a bad virus. How and Why Trump won the election. What the electoral college is supposed to do. Russia hacked voting machines. Whatever the ‘theory’, the idea is to keep us watching and distracted. The Facts of Life present a major challenge to the future of this country. US Debt levels are over 100 percent of the total economic output of the country. Federal spending continues to skyrocket. Entitlements like Obamacare, Social Security and Medicare will swamp the federal budget in the next decades and we have plans to spend trillions on roads and bridges? We’re also facing significant foreign policy and economic challenges in the next few years. Podcast 577-Bob Davis Podcasts Radio Show-55 takes a look at what we have to do to meet these challenges in the next few years. Shouting at people in an airplane aisle, memes and tweets will not work. Sponsored by Hydrus Performance, Ryan Plumbing and X Government Cars.

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Podcast 216

Climate Change. A few thousand ‘protesters’ crowd into the streets of lower Manhattan and it looks like the Puerto Rican Day Parade and Street Fair on Upper 3rd Avenue, when millions of people hit the streets. But alas, it is only Al Gore, Leo DiCaprio and Robert F Kennedy Jr to add more hot air to the already wheezing planet’s atmosphere. Listen to how they react when reporters ask them about their SUV’s and Cell Phones and ‘Carbon Usage’. For Thee, not me, they say. When do draconian laws being pushed by the environmental movement begin to hurt the people the movement says it is trying to help. Slow, or no economic growth threatens the security of the world, farmers can’t get grain to market because oil has to be shipped on rail roads owned by Warren Buffett, and the scion of the rich family that became powerful politically because of corruption, blames the Koch Brothers for all that ails our fair nation. A slash-and-burn-walk-and-talk podcast in reaction to listening to Al Gore and Robert F Kennedy Jr NOT answer questions asked by reporters about their behavior, and the hypocrisy of the so called ‘Global Warming’ movement. Yes, there is a question about the 17 year slow-down in warming, the dire warnings issued more than twenty years ago about the post apocalyptic environment we would be living in (we’re not), and no, scientists do not agree, the ‘debate’ is not over…isn’t that what science is supposed to be about? And then there is the garbage problem; Protesters left tons of their garbage in the streets of Gotham after the ‘protest’. Leo, Al and Bobby were apparently too busy climbing into their SUV’s, heading off to their yachts, or to the next champagne fueled charity event to bother cleaning up after themselves. Meanwhile, China is the largest producer of carbon ‘pollution’. Think they’ll protest there? Yes we have Climate Change. The trees are already changing colors in the upper midwest, and we know a long, cold winter awaits. Sponsored by Sedation and Implant Dentistry of Saint Paul. 

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