Reading archive 2020-11-09

Didn't think to do math - "The funny thing about that is: the Blue States have funded the Red states for decades (the prime source for this information since the 1980s was the libertarian think-tank The Tax Foundation who saw that no Red State was going to pay their own way after 2006 so they stopped collating the info on their web pages)."

Reading archive 2020-11-06

NYPD’s anti-discrimination chief linked to hateful messages

Reading archive 2020-11-05

Here's A Running List Of False And Misleading Information About The Election: Watch out for images and videos being taken out of context.

World watches with unease as drawn-out, contested election batters America’s global image

"We wanted to follow up on a live blog post that we wrote on the afternoon of Nov. 4 and that was later tweeted from the main FiveThirtyEight Twitter account.

 "   Two more batches of Pennsylvania vote were reported: -23,277 votes in Philadelphia, all for Biden -about 5,300 votes in Luzerne County, nearly 4,000 of which were for Biden *With 83% of the expected vote in, Trump’s lead in PA is now just below 6 points. https://t.co/zspxaPkzKs — FiveThirtyEight (@FiveThirtyEight) November 4, 2020 

"This one batch of votes in Philadelphia has been picked up by some people, including a commentator on Fox News, as possible evidence of fraud. It’s not. According to Edison Research, which aggregates vote data for ABC News and other networks (and is the source of the data in question), sometimes election officials and vote aggregators unintentionally enter vote updates one candidate at a time, rather than entering all candidates together. Other candidates’ votes are then included in a subsequent batch. That appears to be what happened here, and in the next update from Philadelphia, Trump got about double the share of votes that he was getting in the other updates from there during that stretch of time."

The Problem with Honey Bees: They’re important for agriculture, but they’re not so good for the environment

Reading archive 2020-11-04

Fact check: At Pennsylvania rally, Trump makes four false claims about voting in the state

Reading archive 2020-11-02

Kentucky State Police quoted Hitler and encouraged cadets to be ‘ruthless’ in a training program

It’s the End of an Era for the Media, No Matter Who Wins the Election: Trump made the legacy media great again. Here’s what’s next for them.

Ice Cube’s Foolish, Ego-Driven Collaboration With the Trump Campaign: The rapper and actor, who has a long history of anti-Semitism, worked with the Trump team on their “Platinum Plan,” a last-ditch effort to curry favor with Black Americans.

Ice Cube’s Long, Disturbing History of Anti-Semitism: He’s recently shared anti-Semitic memes, but the rapper and actor Ice Cube also has a history of anti-Semitic lyrics and was even once accused of ordering the beatdown of a rabbi.

Reading archive 2020-11-01

Biden camp cancels multiple Texas events after a "Trump Train" surrounded a campaign bus: The highway skirmish came as Democrats close ground in a state that is polling competitively in the race for president. Recent polls indicate the presidential race in Texas between President Donald Trump and Joe Biden is tight, with some national prognosticators calling it a “toss-up.”

March to Alamance polls ends with police using pepper-spray on protesters, children

Maria Bartiromo Was a Generational Icon for Financial Television. What Happened?

What Happened to Glenn Greenwald? - "At face value one wonders how Greenwald, who made such a name for himself as an opponent to the national security state, and who lives as a prominent gay journalist, married to a Socialist congressman, in Bolsonaro’s Brazil, can now spend so much time and energy effectively running cover for the American fascist right."

Battle-hymn of the Never Trumpers: Renegade Republicans represent the breadth—and the admirable best—of Joe Biden’s coalition

Trump allies, largely unconstrained by Facebook’s rules against repeated falsehoods, cement pre-election dominance: From a pro-Trump super PAC to the president’s eldest son, conservatives have blown past Facebook’s fact-checking guardrails, with few consequences.

Facebook Fired An Employee Who Collected Evidence Of Right-Wing Pages Getting Preferential Treatment: Facebook employees collected evidence showing the company is giving right-wing pages preferential treatment when it comes to misinformation. And they’re worried about how the company will handle the president’s falsehoods in an election year. - "While there are signs Facebook will stand up to Trump in cases where he violates its rules — as on Wednesday when it removed a video post from the president in which he claimed that children are 'almost immune' to COVID-19 — there are others who suggest the company is caving to critical voices on the right. In another recent Workplace post, a senior engineer collected internal evidence that showed Facebook was giving preferential treatment to prominent conservative accounts to help them remove fact-checks from their content. 

"The company responded by removing his post and restricting internal access to the information he cited. On Wednesday the engineer was fired, according to internal posts seen by BuzzFeed News.

...

"On July 22, a Facebook employee posted a message to the company’s internal misinformation policy group noting that some misinformation strikes against Breitbart had been cleared by someone at Facebook seemingly acting on the publication's behalf. 'A Breitbart escalation marked ‘urgent: end of day’ was resolved on the same day, with all misinformation strikes against Breitbart’s page and against their domain cleared without explanation,' the employee wrote."

Trailing in the polls, Trump enlists his administration and co-opts the government to bolster his reelection

Reading archive 2020-10-30

D.C. police and businesses prepare for possible Election Day unrest

One theory by one justice binds together Supreme Court’s contradictory election opinions

Why Jim Carrey’s Biden impersonation on SNL isn’t quite catching on

Police took a Black toddler from his family’s SUV. Then, the union used his photo as ‘propaganda,’ attorneys say.

Video surfaces showing Philadelphia police bashing SUV windows, then beating driver while child was in backseat

A top Interior official has controversial views on race. He used a white supremacist website to support them.: Jeremy Carl called Black Lives Matter a racist organization in articles written before his appointment this month. He also cited an opinion by Jared Taylor, who said Black people destroy any civilization they control.