RUTHFULLY YOURS

The New York Times just won a Pulitzer Prize for “public service.” I’ve never met this “public” to whom the New York Times has provided some great service.

Perhaps that is unfair. After all, the last article I read in the Gray Lady was actually enlightening.

I had just finished my cultural enrichment with “The Myth of the Criminal Immigrant,” a masterpiece by Anna Flagg, and was set to edify the unenlightened wretches I call friends with the knowledge that “immigration does not increase crime,” when I was informed that a colleague’s home had been raided by the FBI!

My colleague (who will remain unnamed) rolled awake to a team of plainclothes agents pointing guns at him. They politely asked for a word. The agents revealed that my colleague’s father-in-law had unknowingly hired a mechanic who makes most of his “hard-earned” cash as a narcotraficante—not exactly the contribution to GPD we were promised from mass immigration.

Why would I assume that a notorious narco is likely either to be an immigrant or second generation? Call it informed prejudice.

Living in one of the last “conservative” bastions of California, that also happens to be more afflicted with criminal immigrants than most areas, I wondered which routine of intellectual gymnastics Flagg, or anyone else in the New York Times’ salon, might perform to rationalize the existence of this particular criminal immigrant. Also unexplainable, the recent kidnapping attempt at an outlet mall near the border; the Border Patrol’s discovery of 231 pounds of methamphetamine, heroin, and cocaine stuffed by a mother into her van full of children; the more than 158 gangs not infrequently comprised of, however mythological, criminal immigrants; the men beaten and carjacked in broad daylight at a San Diego college, held hostage by the perpetrators as they drove toward the border, and then ejected from the vehicle so that the stolen car could be driven into Mexico.

Every time you think the left could not possibly sink any lower, you get proof they can. Here is a Canadian woman “journalist”, concerned that the contributions to families of the victims of the horrible bus crash of a junior hockey league team in Saskatchewan, are substantial only because they are going to families of white males, those who are privileged. This is where identity politics takes you, and the left is completely wedded to it (via Matt Vespa, Townhall):

MSNBC is part of NBC, so when MSNBC host Chris Hayes lets loose with his full blown anti-Israel hatred, spouting off Hamas propaganda as fact, this is a major network buying into this garbage, not a fringe cable channel. Tamar Sternahll in The Algemeiner:

In a completely biased report saying Israel is endeavoring to “pick off” unarmed Palestinian demonstrators, MSNBC’s Chris Hayes discarded any semblance of journalistic professionalism and embraced Hamas propaganda.

The MSNBC host insisted that the figure he provided for the number of Palestinians wounded by Israeli live fire during the Gaza border “March of Return” on March 30 was sound — despite the fact that it was unconfirmed data supplied by a terror group that has a long history of manipulating casualty statistics to suit its propaganda purposes. (snip)

In addition, the accompanying text stated — as fact — that 750 Palestinians were shot.

How is Hayes so certain “that is the correct number” and “that’s the fact” given that the information is supplied by Gaza’s Health Ministry — meaning Hamas itself?

At no point does Hayes attribute the unconfirmed information to Hamas, and nowhere does he point out that the United States, the European Union, Canada, and Israel have all labeled Hamas a terror organization, making it an unreliable source at best.

Indeed, no source has independently verified Hamas’ figure.

” The free press is a threat to freedom of the press, read about it in the mainstream media.”

The media took a brief break from its campaign against the Sinclair Media Group to go after the National Enquirer. The two don’t have anything in common except the perception of being pro-Trump.

In the good old days, going after rival media outlets meant writing nasty things about them. But these days the media doesn’t write nasty things for the sake of writing them. It writes nasty things to get someone fired, investigated or imprisoned. And that’s what its Sinclair and Enquirer stories are about.

CNN, the Washington Post and the New York Times had wasted barrels of ink and pixels, to warn that Trump’s criticism of their media outlets represented a grave threat to the First Amendment.

And what better way to protect the First Amendment than by destroying it?

In its story about the FBI raid on Trump’s lawyer, the Times managed to suggest that the Enquirer’s support for the President of the United States might strip it of its First Amendment protection.

The Times tells its readers that the “federal inquiry” poses “thorny questions about A.M.I.’s First Amendment protections, and whether its record in supporting Mr. Trump somehow opens the door to scrutiny usually reserved for political organizations.”

That’s a thorny question alright. And there’s plenty more thorns where that one came from.

In ’08, the New York Times published an op-ed by Obama, but rejected McCain’s response. It just published an editorial titled, “Watch Out, Ted Cruz. Beto is Coming” which appears to have no purpose other than to help Beto O’Rourke raise money from New York Times readers.

The Times has a sharp thorn. So sharp it could punch a hole in it and the entire mainstream media.

A Republican senator challenged Mark Zuckerberg on Facebook’s hate speech policies during his congressional testimony Tuesday, asking the Facebook boss if he could define it.

Senator Ben Sasse (R., Neb.) said he worried about policies that are “less than First Amendment full-spirit embracing in my view.”

“I worry about a world where when you go from violent groups to hate speech in a hurry,” Sasse told Zuckerberg. “Facebook may decide it needs to police a whole bunch of speech that I think America may be better off not having policed by one company that has a really big and powerful platform.”

“Can you define hate speech?” he asked.

Zuckerberg said it would be hard to pin down a specific definition, and mentioned speech “calling for violence” as something Facebook does not tolerate.

“I’m worried about the psychological categories around speech,” Sasse interjected. “We see this happening on college campuses all across the country. It’s dangerous.”

Zuckerberg said he did not think pro-life speech would fit any of Facebook’s definitions for hate speech, adding that he “generally agrees” with Sasse’s point.

In the age before cable, there was an iconic sci-fi program called The Outer Limits whose opening featured a series of test patterns; flickering screens; and a narrator who solemnly intoned, “Do not attempt to adjust your television set. We will control all that you see and hear.” Today, that is a chilling reality as social media giant Facebook censors what fans of social media icons Diamond and Silk, aka Lynette Hardaway and her sister Rochelle Richardson, see and hear from this dynamic pair of black conservative women on Facebook.

Racism is a term too easily bandied about these days, particularly by social progressives seeking to silence conservative thought and opinion which they deemed inherently racist in their chants of “white privilege.” Yet it is precisely the term liberals would use if, say, Michelle Obama or the likes of Maxine Waters were treated this way, their words censored because they were deemed “unsafe” to the community.” Indeed, Diamond and Silk themselves haVE raised the possibility that racism might be afoot here:

You are talking about two people here when you say Diamond and Silk. We are the brand. So, when you say things like we are ‘not safe’ for the community what are you trying to say? What are you trying to do? Are you trying to demonize us into something? Are you stereotyping us? What are you trying to do here? Because this doesn’t feel right. This here feels like racism. The left always cries racism. I see racism right here.

A nervous-looking Mark Zuckerberg, under heavy security, arrived on Capitol Hill Monday ahead of his planned testimony at a joint hearing of the Senate Judiciary and Commerce committees on Tuesday, and the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Wednesday.

The Facebook CEO met with lawmakers, including Democratic Senators Bill Nelson and Dianne Feinstein, on Monday to discuss the company’s recent security breaches and to explain how the company plans to protect users going forward. In his written testimony, released ahead of his appearances before Congress, Zuckerberg took full responsibility for Facebook’s failures and vowed to do better in the future.

“It’s clear now that we didn’t do enough to prevent these tools from being used for harm as well. That goes for fake news, foreign interference in elections, and hate speech, as well as developers and data privacy,” Zuckerberg said in the prepared remarks. “We didn’t take a broad enough view of our responsibility, and that was a big mistake. It was my mistake, and I’m sorry. I started Facebook, I run it, and I’m responsible for what happens here.”

In his remarks, Zuckerberg tallied up the known damages thus far—and the numbers are astounding:

In 2013, a Cambridge University researcher named Aleksandr Kogan created a personality quiz app. It was installed by around 300,000 people who agreed to share some of their Facebook information as well as some information from their friends whose privacy settings allowed it. Given the way our platform worked at the time this meant Kogan was able to access some information about tens of millions of their friends.
Our best estimate is that approximately 126 million people may have been served content from a Facebook Page associated with the [Russia-based] IRA [Internet Research Agency] at some point during that period. On Instagram, where our data on reach is not as complete, we found about 120,000 pieces of content, and estimate that an additional 20 million people were likely served it.
Over the same period, the IRA also spent approximately $100,000 on more than 3,000 ads on Facebook and Instagram, which were seen by an estimated 11 million people.
Echoing what COO Sheryl Sandberg told “Today” last week, Zuckerberg said there may be more breaches discovered in the weeks and months to come as the company continues its investigation. “We’re in the process of investigating every app that had access to a large amount of information before we locked down our platform in 2014,” he wrote. “If we detect suspicious activity, we’ll do a full forensic audit. And if we find that someone is improperly using data, we’ll ban them and tell everyone affected.”CONTINUE AT SITE

Professional clowns know what they are doing when they engage in slapstick stunts, such as stepping on a rake. Leftwing clown Jimmy Kimmel is different. The ABC Late Night host stepped on a rake of his own doing without any of the theatrical attention to planning and detail of professional comics. Now he has a key element of his ever-shrinking core audience angry at him.

The dolt went and insulted gays by making creepy, graphic, gross tweets about a broadcasting rival, Fox News’ Sean Hannity. with verbal images of Hannity supposedly engaging in gay sexual relations with President Trump, with graphic decriptions about sexual positioning, anal kissing, and other things, none of which is suitable for family viewing.

Since the tweets are public, here is one:

Don’t worry – just keep tweeting – you’ll get back on top! (or does Trump prefer you on bottom?) Either way, keep your chin up big fella..XO https://t.co/R4QJCoGYCL

— Jimmy Kimmel (@jimmykimmel) April 6, 2018 “>http://

Breitbart news has the rest.

Kimmel’s problem now is that his gay viewers are quite offended and now calling him out for insulting them. Apparently, they’ve heard a lot of this and aren’t interested in more from Kimmel in his bid to beef up his increasingly unfunny schtick. Breitbart has much of the offense taken here, as it happened on Twitter.

Facebook’s problems just keep accumulating, drip by drip—or more like splash by splash. It’s now been discovered that Facebook not only collects and uses the personal data of its members but also collects the data of those who never signed up for Facebook.

So if you’re one of those who blames Facebook users for allowing their personal data to be compromised, don’t be so smug. Facebook may be sharing your personal data as well.

Daniel Kahn Gillmor, senior staff technologist at the ACLU, discovered that, although he never joined Facebook or any other social network, Facebook has a detailed profile on him.

Facebook obtains information from those not on Facebook in two different ways: from other Facebook users and by tracking people who visit other other sites on the web.

When people sign up for Facebook, they’re encouraged to upload their contacts to make it easier for Facebook to connect them with their friends. That allows Facebook to access personal contact information for people who never signed up for the platform or gave their permission to share their information. Facebook knows that these contacts are friends of the new Facebook user, and can start compiling additional details on these non-members.

Gillmor explained, “I received an email from Facebook that lists the people who have all invited me to join Facebook: my aunt, an old co-worker, a friend from elementary school, etc. This email includes names and email addresses — including my own name — and at least one web bug designed to identify me to Facebook’s web servers when I open the email.” He added, “Facebook records this group of people as my contacts, even though I’ve never agreed to this kind of data collection.”

“Similarly, I’m sure that I’m in some photographs that someone has uploaded to Facebook — and I’m probably tagged in some of them. I’ve never agreed to this, but Facebook could still be keeping track.”

Facebook also tracks individuals when they visit other websites. Whenever they click a “like” button on the website, that information often gets fed back to Facebook, along with a list of the websites visited and any Facebook-specific cookies the browser might have collected. Facebook calls this a “third-party request.” As individuals do this over time, Facebook is able to accumulate a detailed profile, again, even though they never signed up for a Facebook account.

Now you might think, so what? Facebook could not possibly know who the person is. Gillmor notes that “the profiles Facebook builds on non-users don’t necessarily include so-called ‘personally identifiable information’ (PII) like names or email addresses, but they do include fairly unique patterns.”

He then conducted a test. “Using Chromium’s NetLog dumping, I performed a simple five-minute browsing test last week that included visits to various sites — but not Facebook,” he wrote. “In that test, the PII-free data that was sent to Facebook included information about which news articles I was reading, my dietary preferences, and my hobbies,” said Gillmor. “Given the precision of this kind of mapping and targeting, ‘PII’ isn’t necessary to reveal my identity. How many vegans examine specifications for computer hardware from the ACLU’s offices while reading about Cambridge Analytica?”