Lies Gush Forth Upon the Land

The president is ramping up his lies and using them against his political opposition. The New York Times reports:

"President Trump on Thursday encouraged a racist conspiracy theory that is rampant among some of his followers: that Senator Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic vice-presidential nominee born in California, was not eligible for the vice presidency or presidency because her parents were immigrants. 

That assertion is false. Ms. Harris is eligible to serve. 

Mr. Trump, speaking to reporters on Thursday, nevertheless pushed forward with the attack, reminiscent of the lie he perpetrated for years that President Barack Obama was born in Kenya."

The transparency of his lie is obvious. It is also discouraging because millions of his followers will come to believe it. The president lamely commented: "I heard it today that she doesn’t meet the requirements. I have no idea if that’s right. I would have thought, I would have assumed, that the Democrats would have checked that out before she gets chosen to run for vice president."

This lie appears to be based on an August 12, 2020 article in Newsweek that asserted that children born in the US of immigrant residents are not US citizens. That false idea was asserted by a conservative lawyer who has been arguing that for years. Once again, crackpot lies become mainstream conservative politics and their sacred alt-reality. Trump himself has been arguing the same thing for a while.

Regarding COVID-19: It's Worse Than What is Reported

A New York Times analysis of excess deaths data from the CDC indicates that about 60,000 more people have probably died from the pandemic than official statistics are reporting. If that analysis is correct, the number of coronavirus deaths is now well over 200,000. Some of the extra deaths is probably from unintentional under counting of deaths. Some is from intentional reducing the death count for political purposes, especially since the president took the counting away from the CDC and gave it Peter Thiel's company. The NYT writes:

Across the United States, at least 200,000 more people have died than usual since March, according to a New York Times analysis of estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This is about 60,000 higher than the number of deaths that have been directly linked to the coronavirus. 

As the pandemic has moved south and west from its epicenter in New York City, so have the unusual patterns in deaths from all causes. That suggests that the official death counts may be substantially underestimating the overall effects of the virus, as people die from the virus as well as by other causes linked to the pandemic.

 

The president's creepy supporter

One source characterized Peter Thiel's involvement like this: "Peter Thiel’s Creepy Tech Firm Is Helping The Government Track Coronavirus." Thiel is a billionaire who made his money by co-founding PayPal. Thiel was a major supporter of the president in 2016, but now fears that he won't be re-elected. Thiel now claims to be backing away from supporting the president's re-election. Given how frequently both the president and the people around him lie, it is reasonable to believe that Thiel is lying about COVID-19 deaths to help his friend get re-elected without donating any cash. Cash donations can be traced back to donors under current law. To hide his support for the president, Thiel's donations are fudged COVID-19 death counts instead of cash. That could be worth more than a pile of gold.

Coronavirus Update 13

Faking the coronavirus pandemic data & lying to the American people: 
“the federal data continue to be unreliable”

A New York Times article reports that experts believe that coronavirus data is being manipulated. In July the president ordered data collection, analysis and reporting to be taken from the experts at the CDC and done by private sector political hacks the HHS hired. Since that time, the infection data veered off the course it was on and infection numbers started to decrease. That was especially true for some red states where the pandemic had spun out of control. The NYT comments:

“Nearly three dozen current and former members of a federal health advisory committee, including nine appointed or reappointed by the health secretary, Alex M. Azar II, are warning that the Trump administration’s new coronavirus database is placing an undue burden on hospitals and will have ‘serious consequences on data integrity.’ 

The advisers, all current or former members of the Healthcare Infection Control Practices Advisory Committee, issued their warning in a previously unpublished letter [shown above] shared with The New York Times. 

The letter was made public as both hospital officials and independent data experts around the country were reporting kinks in the new system, which critics say is undermining the government’s ability to understand the course of the pandemic. The Covid Tracking Project, a respected and widely used resource, identified “major problems” with the new Department of Health and Human Services system in late July, and reported this week that ‘the federal data continue to be unreliable.’”

Once again, an administration with no respect for truth or honesty with the American people is desperately trying to convert real reality into a fake reality. When that happens, as it is right now, reality becomes fake and fake becomes real.

Coronavirus provides weak cover for a major attack on democracy

One possible long-term effect of the pandemic could be a permanent loss of voting rights for democrats and many independents. A Washington Post article, Trump says he’s blocking Postal Service funding because Democrats want to expand mail-in voting during pandemic, comments:

“Trump said Thursday he does not want to fund the U.S. Postal Service because Democrats are seeking to expand mail-in voting during the coronavirus pandemic, making explicit the reason he has declined to approve $25 billion in emergency funding for the cash-strapped agency.

‘Now, they need that money in order to make the Post Office work, so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots,’ Trump said in an interview on Fox Business Network’s Maria Bartiromo. He added: ‘If they don’t get those two items, that means you can’t have universal mail-in voting, because they’re not equipped.’”

In view of how blatant this move to suppress voting is, the president, the political right and the GOP appear to have given up on even trying to appear to be pro-democracy. To them, single-party rule is the goal. There is no obvious reason to think that after the president leaves office, assuming he ever does, that the radical right will ever go back to actually supporting free and fair elections. To the radicals, the new model of democracy is single party rule. The pandemic appears to have flushed this long-term radical right authoritarian goal into the open.

That the postal service needs additional money is entirely the fault of the GOP. The GOP has been financially crippling the postal service for years because it wants postal service to be privatized. The New Yorker commented in a May 2020 article: “For the past forty years, Republicans have been seeking to starve, strangle, and sabotage the U.S. Postal Service, hoping to privatize one of the oldest and most important public goods in American history.”

An anecdote: We pay some bills by checks in the mail. It is now taking a few days longer for the checks to arrive. Since the president has already specifically targeted mail-in ballots for slower delivery, it appears that all mail is slowing down as part of the authoritarian assault on elections. Time will tell if the anomaly this month constitutes a new normal.

Regarding Disqus & Social Well-Being

Zeta Global

Context

Yesterday I discussed my triple. I got blocked on three major radical right, alt-reality and alt-reason websites. I guess that Biden's pick of Kamala Harris set off threat sensors on the radical right.

The complaint

I unleashed a minor blast at Zeta Global earlier today. The response so far is zero, no surprise. Maybe later today a deceptive burp will come forth. Maybe not.

Who is Zeta Global? Glad you asked. It owns Disqus.

What is Disqus? Good question. ZG describes itself like this:

"Zeta Global has continued to double down on data, AI and omnichannel activation capabilities by organically developing and strategically acquiring cutting-edge marketing technology. We are one of the first companies to successfully implement industry-leading innovations in big data and AI to be the recognized leader in the convergence of marketing and advertising technology. 

Today, Zeta Global has offices on four continents, serving over 1000+ enterprise clients such as: Samsung, Toyota and Sprint. Our data-powered marketing technology platform houses the third largest data set in the marketplace (2.4B+ identities) and combines with outcome-driven AI to predict consumer intent, personalize experiences across every channel and power business growth for Fortune 1000 companies."

It sounds really big, but it employs less than 1500 people. What does ZG do? It does what Facebook, Google, Apple and most everyone else who is online seems to do. It collects and sells your data. It sells you and me. On December 5, 2017, Zeta Global acquired Disqus. The news of the acquisition was announced in a blog post by Disqus, apparently signalling a penchant for corporate secrecy.

OK, what were you whining about this time?

Good question. Over the years, I've filed about 3 or 4 complaints, mostly about loss of upvotes. Today's blast was about social damage flowing from the Disqus comment platform.[1] Specifically, the damage was related to two deeply flawed aspects of the Disqus comment system, upvotes and downvotes. Since I have complained twice about the upvote problem, today's blast was mostly related to downvotes. Both contribute to the same serious social problem that is tearing Americans apart today.

What social problem? Belief the problem that belief by millions of Americans in disinformation causes. My rationale is explained in footnote 1 below.

OK, what do you base that crackpot theory on?

Another good question. I do not have solid evidence, but others have come to conclude about the same thing. The blog Shelly and Friends said this about that sometime last year:

"The downvotes do effect the persons Disqus reputation and though it makes the publisher have to whitelist a lot more people due to the false information it adds to Disqus's statistics, it does far more harm to Disqus by making their statistics and using those for literally anything, totally invalid and turns them into garbage statistics that is of zero use to anyone."

In short, both the hackability of people's upvotes to drain them all way and, the abuseability of down votes to pile them on, on the Disqus comment system both contribute to maintenance and strengthening of echo chambers where disinformation can live, grow and thrive and where social damage occurs.

As I have argued here before based on the historical record and a lifetime of personal experience, most (not all) American capitalism is usually not about helping society or average people. It is usually about making as much money as possible, as fast as possible, legal or not. In that cauldron, social well-being, the environment, democracy and honest governance be damned to to hell. But to be fair and balanced, there are many exceptions. Many businesses honestly try to give help their employees and vendors and/or be serious about social concerns. Many are beyond the cynical lip service that most big businesses try to con us into believing they stand for.

Questions: Is that too idealistic to constitute a complaint that an honest, serious person should take seriously? Is there a flaw(s) in the facts and/or reasoning? Too little evidence?


Footnote:
1.  Here is my complaint in it's entirety and here is the link: https://disqus.com/home/discussion/channel-discussdisqus/bug_reports_feedback_downvote_abuse_social_damage/ :

Wednesday, August 12, 2020 

On partisan politics sites, some of the partisans routinely downvote truthful comments that are inconvenient. Some of those partisans follow the person making inconvenient comments and downvote every comment, regardless of what it is. That makes downvotes a powerful tool for ideologically cleansing partisan sites, because the accumulated downvotes leads to honest commenters being blocked. From what I can tell, none of those sites ever whitelist inconvenient commenters. The people who own such partisan sites want ideological purity. They do not want inconvenient truths or reasoning to be present in the comments. 

In essence, what this does is it makes it easy to keep a site ideologically cleansed. The administrators or moderators don't have to do anything to keep inconvenient content from appearing at all. In turn, that fortifies false narratives that some sites routinely promulgate as "news". In turn, that disinformation tends to further polarizes and deceive the audience. What that boils down to is social damage that is caused by downvote abuse. 

Both downvotes and upvotes should be completely eliminated to foster free information flow among people who want knowledge and not divisive ideological or partisan fantasies and disinformation. People who lost their upvotes due to whatever caused that disaster cannot comment on sites that ignore or do not want to whitelist those people. Now, commenters themselves can further limit exposure to inconvenient truth by just downvoting comments they dislike for any reason or no reason. 

Given the abuses and social damage it causes, why downvotes exist in the Disqus system is incomprehensible from a social well-being point of view. Whatever value some people see in downvoting is far outweighed by the social damage that comes from reinforcing partisan disinformation sources. In view of the large size of Disqus, this is a significant social problem.

Of course, the unspoken criticism is this: What arguably is abuse from the social well-being point of view is good from the Zeta Global corporate well-being (profit) point of view. Zeta wants big sites to be able to keep their big political sites ideologically cleansed from reality- and reason-based inconveniences (mostly facts, truth and sound reason) if that is what they want. That freedom to discriminate inconvenient against reality and reason increases Zeta's revenue flow.

Zeta folks - aw, they're nice

I Hit a Triple Today

As some of you may recall, I decided to try to engage with the radical right. I chose three big sites, Breitbart, Town Hall and the Daily Caller to try to engage with. In response to Biden's pick of Harris, I figured it is be a great time to inject a contrarian view. I was right that it is a very good time to inject a contrarian view.

Apparently, all three sites decided they have had enough of me and blocked my comments. It looks like I have to find more radical right sites. Sigh.

This adds to evidence that the radical right is no longer willing to tolerate dissenting facts or opinions. This tells me they are now all in on their run at building an American dictatorship built on demagoguery, irrational fear and irrational intolerance.

Town Hall - I tried twice, then gave up 
(but they did let me respond to another person's 
criticism of Harris as a slut)

The Daily Caller

Breitbart

I bought my first gun because I no longer feel safe in America | Solomon Jones

 In the first half of 2020, gun purchases by African Americans increased by 58% over the same period last year. That’s a bigger increase than any other group, according to a study by the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the firearm industry’s trade organization.

I’m not surprised. I’m one of the Black people who bought a gun for the first time this year.

Though I spent my teen years in North Philly during the rise of crack-driven violence in the ’80s and ’90s, I’ve never been a proponent of guns. Not because I was against their use. I just never believed I needed one.

But that’s changed over the last few years.

I still believe I’m fairly safe among Black people. I think my family is, too. However, in a time of economic and medical strife, with a president who regularly engages in racial rhetoric that paints Black and brown people as the other, I’m concerned about what the future may hold. To be blunt, President Donald Trump has emboldened America’s racists, and I’ve come to the conclusion that it would be irresponsible to leave my family defenseless.

I didn’t come to this decision easily. When my children were younger, my wife and I determined that we wouldn’t have guns in our home. It was too dangerous to do so with little ones afoot, and our East Mount Airy community was relatively safe. Yes, there were property crimes that served as nuisances, but serious violence was rare, and our home was a place of peace.

I’ve also worked hard to stop gun violence through my work with ManUpPHL, an organization I founded to provide mentoring and resources to men who are at risk of becoming victims or perpetrators of gun crimes. That’s why, when I walked into a gun store and underwent a background check to legally purchase a gun, I did so with the knowledge that I was entering into a pact with my community. I knew I was making an unspoken agreement that I would never use my gun to engage in anything other than my responsibility as a husband and father, the responsibility to defend and protect those I love.

While I continue to feel safe in my home and community, America as a whole has grown increasingly dangerous for Black people under the leadership of Donald Trump. At first, it was just rhetoric that painted Mexicans as criminals and rapists. Then it was the notion that there were very fine people among the neo-Nazis who marched to protect a Confederate monument in Charlottesville, Va. Then it was the assertion that Black people came from s—hole countries, that monuments to slavery should be protected, and most recently, that federal agents should be called in to quell protests against racism.

All of this has emboldened those who hate Black people. We’ve seen their racist actions as they’ve called the police on Blacks for perceived infractions like barbecuing, or sleeping, or birdwatching while Black. We’ve seen white supremacists like Dylann Roof commit mass murders against Black people. We’ve seen them challenge government in places like Michigan with heavily armed protests that looked more like Klan rallies than demonstrations against coronavirus restrictions.

As a student of history, I’m concerned that in a time of economic hardship and overall uncertainty, such people will do what has historically been the norm. They will look for others to blame. Jews were the other in Hitler’s Germany, and Muslims were the other after 9/11, for too many Americans. As has been the case throughout American history, Black people are the other right now.

One glaring difference gives me some reason to hope. I’ve seen white allies take to the streets to protest against racial injustice. I’ve spoken with white pastors who’ve rejected the racist practice of segregated worship. I’ve seen much of America willing to listen to the views of those who’ve been oppressed.

Still, this reality remains. In Trump’s America, there is an emboldened and heavily armed faction that believes in racist ideology, and while I believe they’re vastly outnumbered by fair-minded people, they are here. But so am I, and I’m not going anywhere.

I hope I never have to use my gun to protect my family, especially since Black people who are legal gun owners risk being harmed by police who see them as threats to be eliminated rather than citizens to be assisted.

Still, as long as racists have the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms, I will be practicing that right, too.

https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/gun-purchase-increase-2020-african-americans-black-20200804.html