HBO "The Final Year" ... by gimleteye

The emotion I felt, at the conclusion of the excellent HBO documentary "The Final Year", is in one word: "devastation".

I voted for Obama twice, but I found plenty to criticize in his two terms.

Still, "The Final Year" conveys his essential nature -- competence and caution -- qualities of character that stand in stark contrast to the wild and careening presidency of Donald Trump.

The HBO documentary that premiered last night is told mainly through two principal figures in the Obama administration: chief speechwriter and advisor, Ben Rhodes, and Samantha Powers, ambassador to the United Nations. Both convey the care and thoughtfulness absent from the current White House is ways that are shocking and unprecedented.

But these are one viewer's observations, not of the documentary or its makers.

Rather, "The Final Year" wrestles with the challenge of being an optimist and advocate for inclusiveness in an era lurching toward dark uncertainties, fear-mongering and creeping nationalism.

Samantha Powers puts the global emergencies -- of Syria, of crippled and impoverished African nations -- in the context of 65 million refugees around the world: the biggest crisis since the Second World War. Ben Rhodes emphasizes what he hopes will be the Obama legacy, like health care and the Paris Climate Accord.

To the very end, neither believed that in November 2016 the American voter would put targets on the back of these achievements.

What is devastating is to know, today, that the American voter didn't. Trump lost the popular vote by more than 3 million. He won the electoral college by the improbably thin margin of 80,000 in three states. We also know, today, that the influence of hostile, foreign actors like Russia on social media tipped the scales.

Of all the disparate pieces that add up to devastation, the one that most profoundly affected me is how the documentary conveyed Obama's massive achievement: he gave hope through an outreached hand to the dispossessed, the poor and the bereft.

There may be 65 million refugees on the march around the globe today, but the true number of oppressed is many times greater. Throughout our history, the United States represented hope and compassion. Today we see how fragile that capital is, how easily it is squandered, and how difficult it is to replace -- if it can be done at all -- by our allies.

Trump doesn't feature in the documentary until his appearance at the end, like a thunderclap. Obama, Rhodes, Powers: they are gone. Where we live, it is still thundering. That's what I felt, mostly, as the credits rolled on "The Final Year".

How To Level The College Playing Field, by my friend Harold O. Levy ... by gimleteye

A dear friend, Harold Levy, wrote the following for the New York Times. Please share widely.

New York Times, Sunday OPINION

How to Level the College Playing Field
By Harold O. Levy with Peg Tyre
Mr. Levy is a former chancellor of the New York City public schools. He wrote this article with the education journalist Peg Tyre.
April 7, 2018

This time of year, there’s a lot of optimism in the air about college. As acceptance notices come in, it seems like the smartest, hardest-working young people with the greatest potential are being matched to institutions of higher learning that will prepare them for success and promote a free and open society. We might conclude that colleges are greasing the gears of social mobility, which have slowed as of late.

It’s painful to think otherwise, especially for someone like me for whom access to a selective college was a boon and a blessing. The son of a hardware store owner, I attended New York City public schools and got both an undergraduate and a law degree from Cornell. With the support of my loving family, I prospered. In 2000, I was appointed chancellor of the New York City public schools; after that I made investments in classroom technology before being tapped to run a foundation that paves the way for high-performing, low-income students to attend college.

Pod Saves America Comes To Miami ... by gimleteye

A cardboard cutout of Marco Rubio spent much of last night on stage at the Olympia Theater in Miami

The popular Pod Saves America entertained a full and raucous audience at the Olympia Theater (former Gusman) last night in downtown Miami. 

Its website describes the progressive podcast, "A political podcast for people not yet ready to give up or go insane." Last night's audience was of a like mind and welcomed the "...  no-bullshit conversation about politics hosted by Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett, Dan Pfeiffer and Tommy Vietor that breaks down the week’s news and helps people figure out what matters and how to help."

Stage managing and producing a live political conversation that holds an audience is no small feat. To a large extent, the producers can thank the Trump presidency and a terminally corroded GOP. Republicans have done wonders for Democrats by bringing the nation to the brink of chaos all by themselves.

US Senator Marco Rubio and Gov. Rick Scott took it hard on the chin last night. If they didn't have operatives taking notes, they can read the news here.

Based on the amiable fury of the Miami crowd, one had the sense if Scott or Rubio had tried to rent Olympia, even if they had paid an audience to show up, no one would take their tickets.

The Pod team didn't once refer to "FAKE NEWS" or to Fox News by name (it did, however, run a loathsome segment by Fox talking head Tucker Carlson in a game segment called, "Stop, Wait".) Clear enough that the Pod stars let the record of the Trump WH and Republican Congress,  dismally speak for itself.

The thirty-somethings -- comfortably arranged on living room furniture in a half-circle facing the audience -- started with the economy, the losers in the Trump trade war with China, and losers in Trump country.

For the most part, PSA didn't get lost in details. They stayed on the high line, particularly gun violence and inane, idiotic measures Republicans passed -- like arming school teachers -- rather than ban weapons of war on US streets.

The conversation returned to touch on the importance of upcoming elections. If last night's crowd represented the broad electorate, the GOP would lose both houses of Congress in November by a landslide. But the data doesn't lie: southeast Florida is solidly blue, but the state itself is marginally purple.

None in the audience mistook enthusiasm from the hard work ahead; registering voters, making sure they are not stopped by the GOP from voting, and running competent, capable Democrats for public office in all the states, not just where they are comfortably blue

Still, the comparison with 1968 hangs like a shadow. The energies and enthusiasm unleashed by serial marches across the nation; for women and against violence to women, for gun control, and against Trump remind of Vietnam War and Civil Rights protests. Students of American political history know that the seeds for a right wing revolt took root then. The billionaires who harvested rewards, investing in the AltR and putting John Birchers on center stage -- from the Kochs, to the Adelman, Fanjul and Mercer oligarchies -- will use every tool, including a sociopathic president who hangs by a thread, to keep the status quo intact.

Last night in Miami with Pod Save America, one felt a swell of optimism on the horizon: a #bluewaveiscoming.

MORE, on the Facebook debacle ... a five-alarm fire in American democracy ... by gimleteye

Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg are huddled away, trying to figure out their next steps now that the role of Facebook data in promoting the election of Donald Trump and the Alt-R is coming clear. Their shameful disgrace is spreading across Western democracies because elected representatives allowed Moscow Center an open door to exploit the weaknesses and vulnerabilities of human nature; proliferating the scum of nativist fears and anxieties (in parallel, too, with Rupert Murdoch's Fox News empire).

Here are a couple of recent postings worth reading in their entirely. The first, an OPED by Lizzie O'Shea in the UK Guardian (which has bravely lead the disclosures about Cambridge Analytica's exploitation of Facebook data) makes a case for re-working the internet to protect personal data and privacy, as a generalist point of view:

Facebook’s reckless vanity has made the headlines again, with the revelation that data it held on about 50 million users was exploited commercially without their consent, and that when Facebook found out about this, it did pathetically little. We only know this thanks to the bravery of a whistleblower. This is yet another scandal in a troubled period for the company, with a growing sense that it is all profit, no responsibility. But the current malaise goes wider than Facebook. On the internet more widely, the advertising-supported model has demanded its payout, and as a result our experience of the web is getting worse. Like rats scrambling to get back on a sinking ship, senior former-Facebookers are lining up to express regrets. It all feels too little, too late.

The second is by a mathematician whose feed I recently began to follow: Paul-Olivier Dehaye. This post on Medium, in Sept. 2017, is even more astringent today, following the whistleblowers emerging from the Bannon/Trump/Mercer/Cambridge Analytica connections.

Dear Facebook, For the past two years, I have been trying to contribute to the public debate around Facebook’s influence in elections. For instance, I have been credited for research on two influential articles: The Data That Turned the World Upside Down (Das Magazin, Zurich, then translated worldwide) and Robert Mercer: The big data billionaire waging war on mainstream media (The Guardian/The Observer). As part of this wider effort, I have tried for a long time to use my data protection rights to get access to more information about the ad targeting that takes place on your platform. These requests have so far been met with one limited, but encouraging, success.

I’m just a curious FB adopter who blogs from time to time on Facebook, a five-alarm fire in American democracy. I was horrified by FB content that passed on my screen in 2016 (before deleting all the Trump and RUS supporting groups that swamped my FB feed.)

Dehaye has an outline of what Facebook is not telling us about its algorithms. We’ve allowed FB to abuse western democracies and election processes ... long past time for governments to intervene although that runs counter to the Republican narrative; a significant reason for Congress to be returned to Democratic control in Nov. 2018.

The GOP has been as silent on Cambridge Analytica and Trump as it has been on Facebook. It doesn't want to confront the truth that its jihad against government regulation -- of everything from public health to to gun safety -- is criminal negligence. The swamp isn't being drained. America is not being made great again.

Unattributed Quote Of The Day ... by gimleteye

"Many people don't understand that we are the sink at the end of the rest of the world's brain drain. Other countries send us their best and their brightest and most want to stay. Over 50% of PhDs in math and engineering awarded in the US in recent years have gone to foreign nationals. 80% of these students want to remain in the US post-graduation. In 2016 all five of the American recipients of Nobel Prizes were born elsewhere. At Harvard, close to 40 percent of faculty were born outside the US. In a knowledge based economy, why would we turn our backs on this rich mother lode of human capital? It makes absolutely no sense."

NOTE: MAGA is a fraud, exploited by opportunists and toasted by the Kremlin.

Stormy Daniels is fit to end the sonnet ... by gimleteye

UK Guardian Carole Caddwalldr just broke open the story of the Cambridge Analytica whistleblower. Click here, to read the story. This morning, Facebook banned the whistleblower.

Rupert Murdoch set the stage, long ago, with a profit model to extract billions by ginning up base emotions. Under Reagan, the Fairness Doctrine disappeared. Mark Zuckerburg weaponized Murdoch's model and helped put a mobbed-up grifter in the WH. Putin saw the opportunity most clearly, driving straight through social media to infiltrate the US elections. While federales were building TSA check points at airports to prevent another 9/11, Moscow Center copied a few data files, put a few 20 yr old computer nerds to work, and shattered liberal democracy. Stormy Daniels is fit to end the sonnet.

Boston Dynamics: leading the world to a dystopian future ... by gimleteye

It is not going to be very long before we will look back at this YouTube video and think -- how quaint.

How many more lines of software code will it take, to instruct an intelligent robot to destroy whatever is obstructing it from its orders? Not fiction, anymore.

The animatronic, AI dog is visually arresting but you should be more rattled by miniaturized drones (cf. killer bees) that are much harder to knock down or to chase.

Is democracy up to the task of mediating the impacts of artificial intelligence on society and the economy? Not so far.

In 2016 we witnessed the weaponization of the internet and the application of artificial intelligence (bots) to augment the manipulation of technologies (cf. social media platforms) to political purposes. Moreover, the 2016 election of Donald Trump and the subsequent deformation of the GOP Congress over "intelligence" issues show how base human impulses -- a president's -- are susceptible to weaponized attacks by our enemies -- Putin's Russia.

These are massively important problems to confront with speed. Instead, we are locked down by screeching; over Trump/Russia collusion, over the 2nd Amendment and whether teachers should be armed with semi-automatic weapons. One wants to just shake our elected by their lapels and say, "Stop! Watch this!"

Will Corporate America Make The Same Mistake As It Did In The 1960's? ... by gimleteye

The historical record is clear. In response to perceived threats to social order in the 1960's, corporate America was lead into a wilderness -- to blindly support right-wing, Republican think tanks and message machinery -- that pointed the nation to exactly this outcome: a democracy severely deformed by an extraordinarily narrow group of wealthy, special interests. Donald Trump, the most incompetent and disliked president in modern US history, is a manifestation of that outcome.

Today, the first cracks are appearing: big American corporations have withdrawn support for the NRA, the organization that fronts for billionaire manufacturers of guns.

Earlier this week, longtime NRA kingpin Wayne LaPierre affirmed this point of view when he reached to the back of the bag of dirty tricks and darkly summoned the image of "socialism's return" if AR-15's were banned. An NRA spokesperson looked even loonier, brandishing automatic weapons in a photo like a terrorist.

LaPierre is working from the same story line that motivated corporate America to support the Powell Memorandum in 1971. An attorney at the time, before his appointment to the US Supreme Court, Powell sincerely sucker punched logic:

In all fairness, it must be recognized that businessmen have not been trained or equipped to conduct guerrilla warfare with those who propagandize against the system, seeking insidiously and constantly to sabotage it. The traditional role of business executives has been to manage, to produce, to sell, to create jobs, to make profits, to improve the standard of living, to be community leaders, to serve on charitable and educational boards, and generally to be good citizens. They have performed these tasks very well indeed. But they have shown little stomach for hard-nose contest with their critics, and little skill in effective intellectual and philosophical debate.

In rejecting sponsorship of the NRA, corporate America is breaking with a long, dejected history that lead the United States to the point of putting military-grade weapons in American schools. It also appears to be recognizing that the Trump White House and the GOP Congress is making Russia look good in comparison. No sane nation arms its teachers. No sane businessman reads about indictments of top campaign officials of Donald Trump and skips past the conclusion that when the nation wobbles, so do business profits.

There is always a likelihood that herd instinct will corral American businesses back into line. The US Chamber of Commerce and other trade groups, like Associated Industries and the builders' lobby, are made for that. But when Russian schools seem safer than ours in the United States, something has to break.

Even corporate America chieftains remember how hard it was to put Humpty-Dumpty back together again.

Repel the invaders of democracy. In November 2018, will voters still remember why they were so furious in February? ... by gimleteye

The Parkland massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School triggered the largest demonstrations by students since the Vietnam War.

I was a high school student in the late 1960's. If memory serves me well, I was as passionate and determined as the children today who took their protest against weapons of war in American streets to Tallahassee and to the White House in Washington, DC. I marched against the war, organized, and campaigned for Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern -- both Democrats -- before I was old enough to vote. I recall the marvel of technology called the mimeograph machine where I was assigned to make copies of protest flyers.

I didn't just march. My teenage activism deeply impacted my adult life as an engaged and ardent Friend of the Everglades and supporter of clean air, clean water and a sustainable planet. The point: while my passion didn't burn out, I have become very well educated how to tend the flame.

The short observation: the elections during the throes of the Vietnam War didn't work out so well for either McCarthy or McGovern. Beyond the fact of our favorite candidates losing, the student protests of the 1960's lit a fire under the far right that quickly materialized (as history records) the organization of a lobbyist culture built to protect a right-wing message machinery that remains far more sophisticated and well-funded than its opponents among Democrats or Independents.

The obstacles to change materializing from student protests today are enormous.

For one, the NRA -- a front organization for a few billionaire gun manufacturers -- is a well-oiled and politically sophisticated machine. The NRA front men have taken cover, for the time being, while key surrogates like President Trump and Senator Marco Rubio (from my home state, Florida) play delay, waiting out controversial choices that keep weapons of war on American streets and inside American schools.

It is a telling signal that corporate America remains on the sidelines as if to say, this is not our battle. No corporate race to support the children or grieving families: neither at Sandy Hook, nor Parkland nor the Denver suburb where movie goers were shot up like figures in a computer game.

So, what to make of this generation's nightmare compared to the 1960's?

Think about it this way. Students in the 1960's protested US foreign policies including an invasion of Vietnam under false pretense: communism's imminent spread through falling dominoes in Southeast Asia.

Today, the United States is not invading: we are being invaded. Recently, Business Insider reported:

The Economist Intelligence Unit released on Wednesday its 2017 Democracy Index, which ranks 167 countries on a 0 to 10 scale. Only countries with scores above 8 are categorised as "full" democracies.

The US was downgraded from a "full democracy" to a "flawed democracy" in the same study last year, which cited the "low esteem in which US voters hold their government, elected representatives, and political parties."

Obviously, the invasions against American democracy are being duly noted. Since the Parkland shootings, President Trump has signaled an idea -- trumpeted in private by the NRA which poured more than $30 million into his 2016 campaign -- that the solution to in-school violence is to arm more teachers and janitors with rifles inside schools.

Voters should be repelled by the illogic of inviting an invasion of violence into safe-spaces.

It is also a fact that the United States has been invaded -- using social media platforms as superhighways into American politics -- by a hostile foreign power, Russia under Putin; a fact that the Republican Party -- once the hawkish party of the right -- and President Trump just plain refuse to acknowledge or accept.

Today's student protesters are real American patriots. They need to understand themselves that way and spread the message like tens of millions of Paul Revere's. The nation's enemies are tolerate attacks on our way of life and force us to consequences; whether through the internet, troll factories spewing lies, or deranged gunmen whose right to carry AR-15's are protected by a NRA taking millions from Russia.

If student protesters embrace this grounding idea, that they are the true patriots, the next problem to address: will American voters stay focused and engaged for the better part of a year, until next November's election, to tip the balance back to common sense and to repel the invaders?


RELATED:
As of Feb. 18, Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam still had the “NRA Sellout” language on his campaign website, but it has since been removed, according to tweets highlighting the removal.

Once a 'proud NRA sellout,' Putnam won't say if he'd use term again
By MATT DIXON 02/20/2018 09:01 PM EST Updated 02/20/2018 10:11 PM EST

TALLAHASSEE — Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam began his gubernatorial campaign by branding himself an “NRA sellout,” and after a Florida school shooting that left 17 dead last week, will not say if he would use the controversial language again.

Is it finally clear to voters that the Florida Republican Party is a radical fringe? Maybe. ... by gimleteye

What is wrong with Trump supporters/ the Republican Party? Have they entirely lost their minds? The answer to that, is a resounding YES. Watch this amazing clip from CNN:

RUSSIA FOUND OUR VERY WORST AND IS STILL EXPLOITING THEM: this Florida woman, who ran a Trump supporters page that unwittingly promoted a Russian-coordinated event on Facebook says she doesn’t believe that she was influenced by Kremlin-linked trolls.

Then, this: the GOP majority state legislature yesterday argued that porn is more dangerous than semi automatic weapons in schools. Really.

The news is splattering across the web. From GQ Magazine:

One is a threat to public health and should be investigated, the other is an AR-15.

On Tuesday, less than a week after the deadliest school shooting in U.S. history, students who survived the massacre looked on as Florida's House of Representatives voted along party lines to shut down a bill banning assault rifles.

According to Florida's legislature the real threat to the health and safety of the state's teens isn't how easy it is for their classmate to legally purchase an AR-15. According to the Tampa Bay Times, the pressing, immediate danger is in all those erotic Tumblrs out there:

The state's House of Representatives approved the resolution by a voice vote on Tuesday. The resolution states a need for education, research and policy changes to protect Floridians, especially teenagers, from pornography.

Republican Rep. Ross Spano says there is research that finds a connection between pornography use and mental and physical illnesses, forming and maintaining intimate relationships and deviant sexual behavior. Spano is also a candidate for attorney general.

The most twisted part of this is the demands by Florida Republicans to research the public health impact of porn, while the CDC is implicitly banned from doing research on gun violence. The 1996 Dickey Amendment specifically blocks the CDC from using its budget to "advocate or promote gun control," and since objective, peer-reviewed, scientific studies consistently show effective gun control would reduce gun violence, there's no research the CDC can do that won't sacrifice its funding.

This is a clear example of Republican priorities, where gun control isn't a public health issue or a matter of literal life and death, but rather it's a political wedge issue that lets you clobber Democrats or out-rightwing other Republicans in primaries. This is the political world where news of 17 people shot to death in a high school is received gladly by a president's administration because it means their incompetence won't take up as much space in the news cycle.

Most people would probably be ashamed to basically kill a gun control bill with teenage survivors in the room with them. But shame isn't enough of an incentive to get a legislator to flip on such a lucrative and politically useful issue. Unfortunately for them, these students are organized, angry, and soon to be voting age.

Sunday Culture: Celebrate the best Tap Dances ever. By Geniusofdespair

Fayard and Harold Nicholas: The Nicholas Brothers.

From Wiki:

One of their signature moves was to leapfrog down a long, broad flight of stairs, while completing each step with a split. Its most famous performance formed the finale of the movie Stormy Weather.[3] In that routine, the Nicholas Brothers leapt exuberantly across the orchestra's music stands and danced on the top of a grand piano in a call and response act with the pianist, to the tune of Jumpin' Jive.[3] Fred Astaire once told the brothers that this dance number was the greatest movie musical sequence he had ever seen.[3]

In another signature move, they would rise from a split without using their hands.[3] Gregory Hines declared that if their biography were ever filmed, their dance numbers would have to be computer generated because no one now could emulate them.[3] Ballet legend Mikhail Baryshnikov once called them the most amazing dancers he had ever seen in his life.

Pro-Trump forces are turning social media into wastelands ... by gimleteye

It has taken me months, since the November election of Donald Trump, to come to terms with how he won and how he mobilized his base.

I'm not the only person who thought Trump could never win, and -- like millions of other Americans -- I am among those who only had a vague and general idea how software interlopers could manipulate social media to achieve political victory.

Blogs like ours were created as a work-around of advertiser-driven media (cf. The Miami Herald) that steered readers away from subjects and points of view we value. Issues like the Everglades, or the Urban Development Boundary or climate change, places where editorial content, reporting, and conventional political wisdom tracked alongside big developers (cf. Lennar) or polluters (cf. Big Sugar).

What I didn't grasp, until the November election, is how the next generation of media activists would come armed with knowledge of software code and that this next generation would aim to occupy social media websites (cf. Facebook and Twitter) to find, convert and radicalize an extremist base disinclined to rationale and logical thought.

Along this line, there has been excellent reporting (cf. UK Guardian) and online sleuthing (patribotics.com) peeling back the layers to show the interaction of the Trump campaign and its major donors with software/ data manipulators: Cambridge Analytica, the nexus of Robert Mercer and Steve Bannon, and others.

Before the election, they were WAY ahead of the Democrats and the Clinton campaign. Liberals were still imagining that hacking was an external threat and not one that already had invaded U.S. elections. In that regard, the Democrats and Clinton were just like me: aware of the threat from corruption of social media but unaware the war had already started.

Now, in hindsight, we can see what happened. While I was sleeping -- or writing this blog for the readers (few!) whose attention span exceeds more time and space than 140 characters -- a war for the hearts and minds and votes of enough Americans to swing a presidential election was underway, through a perverse reason and logic extended to the invention of data algorithms to scan, analyze, dissect and distribute messages meant to galvanize Trump supporters who use social media websites.

Moreover, the Trump victory proved that current campaigning -- involving billions of dollars from donors to television (mainly) advertisement -- was literally defeated by only a few tens of millions dedicated to software engineering and data/ social media manipulation.

Trump absolutely understands that asymmetrical political warfare (the equivalent of using box cutters to take down a national economy) was key to his victory. Along this line, he has broken all rules governing presidential behavior, including the idea of a permanent campaign.

A permanent campaign is also occurring on social media platforms like Facebook. There still is no accountability to the relationships of Trump with the hundreds of Facebook pages nested (like Russian dolls) within each other. What is clear, though, is that these pages are designed to blend fear, anxiety of terrorism, and threats to Christian faith in a big, boggy mess. The fake conspiracies laced throughout are like tar paper designed to catch readers. Or chumming to collect click bait.

I didn't know anything before Trump about sock puppets, bots, or the use of AI to wage political marketing campaigns, netting voters. Now I do, and I am sure there will be many more opportunities to learn why and how social media platforms like Facebook are being scorched and laid to waste. It is a form of online terrorism and a virtual analog to Gen. William T. Sherman's March in the Civil War where he inflicted fear and terror in the South laying waste to a wide swath of Georgia.

By setting fire to social media platforms -- anyone can do it! -- the alt-right is paradoxically chasing readers back to newspapers and even to blogs like ours where we don't make shit up and pass off conspiracy theories as truth. Unfortunately, there's a very big audience for conspiracy theories passed off as truth.

For those with patience and appetite, here is a report how the alt-right is gaming Google to ensure that only fringe sources turn up on Google searches. It's an eye opener.

WIOD radio cancels the only progressive voice in South Florida radio: Fernand Amandi ... by gimleteye

WIOD, part of the right-wing iHeart Radio Network, just cancelled the only progressive voice on the South Florida radio spectrum; Fernand Amandi. Yes WIOD that tolerates Rush Limbaugh ("How do you tell misinformed people they are wrong?") and features Sean Hannity -- the same Hannity that is doing his best to be fired by the Murdoch Fox empire -- and Glenn Beck.

One suspects that the "cost cutting measures" aren't the real reason Fernand's show was cancelled. More likely, the same morons who sell ad space for Limbaugh, Hannity and Beck weren't making the case for advertisers to support Amandi. It takes too much intelligence for ad salesmen and women, apparently, to bridge the gap: explaining that a robust, diverse schedule deserves EQUAL support by advertisers.

Amandi expressed, and embraced, a progressive point of view: that the GOP Congress has been too silent, timid, and fearful of exploring the facts and truth around the most incompetent, chaotic president in U.S. history: Donald Trump. So basically, Amandi was the anti-Limbaugh, and he was fearless: talking about the sacred cows in South Florida.

Thank you, Fernand!

I don't know about you, but I'm turning off WIOD for the time being. You, too, can write to WIOD here to express support for Fernand Amandi, or, send an email to WIOD here.

General Manager/ NewsRadio WIOD
7601 Riviera Blvd
Miramar, FL 33023

Twitter: @iHeartMedia

Facebook: How Transparency Of FB Pages Could Solve The Problem Of Unregulated Political Activities ... by gimleteye

Follow me on Twitter: @gimleteyemiami

The UK Guardian reports this morning:

A tool exposing how voters are targeted with tailored propaganda on Facebookhas been launched in response to what is likely to be the most extensive social media campaign in general election history.

Experts in digital campaigning, including an adviser to Labour in 2015, have designed a program to allow voters to shine a light into what they describe as “a dark, unregulated corner of our political campaigns”.

The free software, called Who Targets Me?, can be added to a Google Chrome browser and will allow voters to track how the main parties insert political messages into their Facebook feeds calibrated to appeal on the basis of personal information they have already made public online. 

This is a terrific advancement, although an independent one. Facebook could incorporate a similar feature to address criticism that it is more than a social media platform: Facebook is an agency for unregulated political activities.

Mapping tools are ubiquitous on the web. They can instantaneously disclose the neural networks of people, of issues, and virtually any fact with a shared theme.

Click here for an interesting example of one map.

Facebook could incorporate such a tool through a hyperlink on every page that is being used as a political gathering and recruiting spot -- including those with purportedly religious themes. The purpose of the tool would be three-fold: 1) to identify the user who created the page, including ISP address, and 2) to provide an instant map of all pages that "shared" the same post and 3) provide a cloud feature showing the network of inter-connected pages, labeled by themes, sources, or other data.

The purpose: full disclosure.

The point: hundreds of millions of Facebook users are recruited to "like" and to "share" pages based on individual preferences. There is nothing wrong with that. Individual preferences are at the heart of free expression.

But when Facebook pages are being organized for patently political purposes, to drive similar messages and to recruit -- ultimately -- voters, the host of those pages, Facebook, has crossed the line into political activity.

Facebook, rather that risking government regulation, should voluntarily undertake to make the sources of political activities as transparent as possible for users. It should provide a mapping feature on each Facebook page involving a meme, a political or religious activity.

With a click or two, users can then be educated about the who, what, and why of political Facebook pages -- drawing their own conclusions should they want to do so.

In the coming days, I will be writing more about Facebook and welcome readers comments.

What is Facebook? The political issue of 2017 ... by gimleteye

As a Facebook adopter for years, I use the social media platform in predictable ways; to be in touch with friends, to share news and memories, and to express my opinions. In the latter respect, Facebook amplifies what I write on this blog.

Friends on Facebook share posts with their friends, and so Facebook is a platform that expands the reach of ideas, previously channeled through the ways of print.

Its daily users far exceed newspapers and broadcast media without borders and in ways where the underlying unit economics are driven by clicks. Facebook, truly, is more like a utility with no cost structure: everyone can tap in freely.

Of course, there is a cost structure: advertisers and investors have flocked to Facebook, turning its co-founder Mark Zuckerberg into one of the wealthiest entrepreneurs on the planet.

The 2016 election, and its aftermath, exposed the major flaw in the Facebook model: it has morphed into an extraordinarily successful, unregulated platform for political activities.

As we noted before, political interests -- mainly coalesced around Donald Trump -- conceived a brilliant plan to channel Trump supporters onto hundreds of Facebook pages in order to amplify the dissemination of information often misleading, false, and intended to stimulate fear and anxiety.

It is also clear that Facebook provided a platform for Russia to meddle in the 2016 election. Russia's disinformation, then and now, closely tracked the same memes, ideas, and communication strategies adopted by the Trump campaign. It is broadly accepted by the intelligence community that Russia used Facebook to amplify its effort to turn the 2016 to Donald Trump.

And so, in aggregate, Facebook is more than a social media platform.

Facebook has responded to criticism -- and invited a public discussion -- of countermeasures to FAKE news. Still, Facebook is the wild, wild West for hateful messaging designed to silo voters who also hear and see similar, nuanced messaging on both conservative radio and broadcast television.

Facebook and Information Operations v1

There is nothing new about coordinated political activity. Facebook and other social media outlets -- but Facebook mainly because of its size and scalability -- has a unique challenge: to regulate itself before government decides it is indeed a utility and should be regulated like one.

I respect Facebook's willingness to engage on these issues. Last week, the company issued an extraordinary report offering its views on a constructive framing of its positions.

In the coming days, I'll be writing more on the Facebook and, in the meantime, welcome your thoughts.

March For Science Miami ... by gimleteye #marchforscience

Follow me on Twitter: @gimleteyemiami

Today's March For Science joins Miami to cities around the world and people planting their feet, signs, and spirit "for" science. The Miami event starts at Museum Park downtown at 11AM and will end at the Stephen Clark Government Center a short distance away.

Yesterday, a Twitter post reflected my feelings:

I can't believe we have to march for FREAKING SCIENCE, either, but such is the effect of a state government under Rick Scott and a federal government under his buddy, Donald Trump. Both are driving science into the shadows and deep into the weeds.

This isn't an academic issue. It is a matter of life and death. For example, there is evidence -- we have documented on our blog -- that the state of Florida is withholding data on rare pediatric cancer clusters in Florida. It is infuriating. Outrageous. Despite the corporate runs for cancer, the people wearing pink or yellow wrist bands, politics continues to conspire against science.

Moreover, it is appropriate for the March Against Science in Miami to end at County Hall. County commissioners and the executive mayors of Miami-Dade, Florida's most populous county, routinely use science as cannon fodder in service of big campaign donors and powerful special interests.

Exhibit #1: Florida Power and Light's failed cooling canal system at Turkey Point in Homestead. For DECADES, FPL dodged the manifest evidence that its cooling canals were leaking hyper saline water underground in all directions: toward population centers, drinking water wells, and into Biscayne National Park. Politics allowed FPL to avoid its legal obligations.

Exhibit #2: The Miami-Dade West Wellfield. This wellfield supplies 2.2 million Floridians with most of their drinking water. Not only did Miami-Dade County Commissioners -- many current commissioners included -- shovel science to the side, allowing development and rock miners to encroach on the wellfield protection zone, they subverted science showing the danger for many years.

Exhibit #3: The South Dade Watershed Plan. A decade ago the nation's most expensive and intensive science-based effort mapped a plan for future development in the remaining open areas of farmland in West and South Dad. When the plan -- costing about $15 million -- was finished, county commission took the science and put it on a shelf due to opposition from large political donors in farming, rock mining and development. This is particularly relevant today, because the study considered low lying, flood prone areas in South Florida that will be impacted by sea level rise and climate change.

The county commissioners who have been invited to join the march today can and will no doubt make the case that they support science.

County Commissioner Daniella Levine Cava, for instance, promoted and supported a science-based resolution calling for land acquisition in the Everglades Agricultural Area in 2015, that her fellow commissioners supported. Once the sugar industry got wind, however, in 2016 a more specific science-based appeal to the state legislature did not pass the county commission and withered instead.

In the current session of the Florida legislature, science has been further shoved into the background as Big Sugar wages a battle with more than 100 lobbyists to thwart the will of the people. Based on science.

I've been an observer how politics wrecks science-based decision making for close to three decades. It is and time for younger generations to become involved because the ultimate collision of science and politics is the one over climate change. Gov. Rick Scott and US Senator Marco Rubio, and most of the GOP in Florida, are climate change deniers. So is President Trump.

I marched in the Vietnam War. I've marched for women's rights. I marched for the 2000 recount of the presidential election. I marched for the Homestead Air Force Base and for the national parks and for the environment. I can't believe in 2017 we have to march for FREAKING SCIENCE. But more than march, people who believe that democracy depends on fact and science have to vote.

PS. If you miss today's march, there is another next Saturday 1PM, April 29 on Earth Day at Jose Marti Park.

Patriots' Turnout For Obama VS. Patriots' Turnout For @RealDonaldTrump ... by gimleteye

Sad, @RealDonaldTrump! #sotiredofwinning @gimleteyemiami

David Daleiden, activist from secret Planned Parenthood videos, charged with 15 felonies

David Daleiden, the anti-abortion activist with roots in Davis, and an alleged co-conspirator were charged Tuesday for falsifying their identities and using a fake bioresearch company to covertly record videos of themselves trying to obtain fetal tissue from Planned Parenthood.

The 15 felony charges were brought by Attorney General Xavier Becerra against Daleiden and Sandra Merritt of the Center for Medical Progress.

AM 610 WIOD Fernand Amandi: Local Star Stands Up To Right-Wing Extremists ... by gimleteye

follow me on Twitter @gimleteyemiami

I've been listening to AM radio again, 610 WIOD, with Fernand Amandi, host of the morning show. Amandi brings an informed voice on politics in America to the local scene. Fernand is a principal at Bendixen and Amandi International, the nation’s leading multilingual and multiethnic public opinion research and strategic communications consulting firm based in Miami, Florida. Amandi's communications projects and analysis have been featured in The New York Times, CNN, National Public Radio, The Washington Post, USA Today, Newsweek, Time, The Economist, and the Miami Herald among others.

After the election of Trump and the rise of disinformation, clear articulation of fact and issues beyond the right-wing conspiracy wackadoodles is needed more than ever. AM radio, and in particular the iHeart Radio Network lost my attention when it adopted the shock jock fringe like Rush Limbaugh. I just tuned out. Now I'm tuning into Amandi's program. There's a movement to bring his voice to a national audience. Listen, and add your voice here:

Seattle Times: The Information War Is Real And We're Losing It ... by gimleteye

UW professor: The information war is real, and we’re losing it | Danny Westneat
Seattle Times, MARCH 30, 2017

A University of Washington professor started studying social networks to help people respond to disasters. But she got dragged down a rabbit hole of twitter-boosted conspiracy theories, and ended up mapping our political moment.
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It started with the Boston marathon bombing, four years ago. University of Washington professor Kate Starbird was sifting through thousands of tweets sent in the aftermath and noticed something strange.

Too strange for a university professor to take seriously.

“There was a significant volume of social-media traffic that blamed the Navy SEALs for the bombing,” Starbird told me the other day in her office. “It was real tinfoil-hat stuff. So we ignored it.”

Same thing after the mass shooting that killed nine at Umpqua Community College in Oregon: a burst of social-media activity calling the massacre a fake, a stage play by “crisis actors” for political purposes.

“After every mass shooting, dozens of them, there would be these strange clusters of activity,” Starbird says. “It was so fringe we kind of laughed at it.

“That was a terrible mistake. We should have been studying it.”