reuters | A broad coalition
of advertising trade groups, ad buyers and sellers from Western Europe
and the United States have urged the industry to stop using annoying
online marketing formats that have fuelled the rapid rise of
ad-blockers.
The types of
ads the coalition has identified as falling below standard include
pop-up advertisements, auto-play video ads with sound, flashing animated
ads and full-screen ads that mask underlying content from readers or
viewers.
The explosion of
ad-blocking tools has launched a prolonged debate within the advertising
industry over whether to rein in abusive ad practices or simply freeze
out consumers who use ad blocker and still expect access to premium
content.
The Coalition for Better
Ads said on Wednesday it was publishing the voluntary standards after a
study in which more than 25,000 web surfers and mobile phone users rated
ads.
They identified six types of
desktop web ads and 12 types of mobile ads as falling beneath a
threshold of consumer acceptability and called on advertisers to avoid
them.
Matti
Littunen, research analyst at Enders Analysis focusing on digital
media, said the ad formats identified by the coalition "have already
been discouraged for years by these bodies and yet are still
commonplace."
guardian | Google’s decision-making process over which YouTube
videos are deemed “advertiser friendly” faces scrutiny from both brands
and creators, highlighting once again the challenge of large-scale
moderation.
The company last week pledged to change its advertising policies after several big brands pulled their budgets from YouTube following an investigation that revealed their ads were shown alongside extremist content, such as videos promoting terrorism or antisemitism.
Havas, the world’s sixth largest advertising and marketing company,
pulled all of its UK clients’ ads, including O2, BBC and Domino’s Pizza,
from Google and YouTube on Friday, following similar moves from the UK government, the Guardian, Transport for London and L’Oreal.
However, the inconsistencies behind the company’s ability to police
advertising on controversial content are coming to light – and it’s not
just advertisers who are complaining. Some YouTube creators argue their
videos are being unfairly and inconsistently “demonetized” by the
platform, cutting off their source of income that comes from the revenue
share on ads placed on videos.
unz | We have a president who is belligerent towards Iran, who is sending
“boots on the ground” to fight ISIS, who loves Israel passionately and
who is increasing already bloated defense budgets. If one were a
neoconservative, what is there not to like, yet neocons in the media and
ensconced comfortably in their multitude of think tanks hate Donald
Trump. I suspect it comes down to three reasons. First, it is because
Trump knows who was sticking the knife in his back during his campaign
in 2016 and he has neither forgiven nor hired them. Nor does he pay any
attention to their bleating, denying them the status that they think
they deserve because of their self-promoted foreign policy brilliance.
And
second, Trump persists in his desire to “do business” with Russia. The
predominantly Jewish neocons always imagine the thunder of hooves of
approaching Cossacks preparing to engage in pogroms whenever they hear
the word Russia. And this is particularly true of Vladimir Putin’s
regime, which is Holy Russia revived. When not musing over how it is
always 1938 and one is in Munich, neocons are nearly as unsettled when
they think it is 1905 in Odessa.
The
third reason, linked to number two, is that having a plausible and
dangerous enemy like Russia on tap keeps the cash flowing from defense
industries to the foundations and think tanks that the neocons nest in
when they are not running the Pentagon and National Security Council.
Follow the money. So it is all about self-interest combined with tribal
memory: money, status and a visceral hatred of Russia.
The hatred of Trump runs so deep that a leading neocon Bill Kristol actually tweeted
that he would prefer a country run by bureaucrats and special interests
rather than the current constitutional arrangement. The neocon
vendetta was as well neatly summed up in two recent articles by Max
Boot. The first is entitled“Trump knows the Feds are closing in on him” and the second is “WikiLeaks has joined the Trump Administration.”In
the former piece Boot asserts that “Trump’s recent tweets aren’t just
conspiratorial gibberish—they’re the erratic ravings of a guilty
conscience” and in the latter, that “The anti-American WikiLeaks has
become the preferred intelligence service for a conspiracy-addled White
House.”
Now,
who is Max Boot and why should anyone care what he writes?
Russian-born, Max entered the United States with his family through a
special visa exemption under the 1975 Jackson-Vanik Amendment even
though they were not notably persecuted and only had to prove that they
were Jewish. Jackson-Vanik was one of the first public assertions of
neoconism, having reportedly been drafted in the office of Senator Henry
Jackson by no less than Richard Perle and Ben Wattenberg as a form of
affirmative action for Russian Jews. As refugees instead of immigrants,
the new arrivals received welfare, health insurance, job placement,
English language classes, and the opportunity to apply for U.S.
citizenship after only five years. Max went to college at Berkeley and
received an M.A. from Yale.
washingtonsblog | As Rep. Adam Schiff tries out for the lead role in a remake of the
Joe McCarthy hearings by maligning specific Americans as suspected
Russian moles, some of the actual evidence argues against the Democratic
notion that the Russians own President Trump and other key Republicans.
For instance, last week, Democrats circulated a report showing that
retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, who served briefly as President Donald
Trump’s national security adviser, had received payments from several
Russia-related entities, totaling nearly $68,000.
The largest payment of $45,386 came for a speech and an appearance in
Moscow in 2015 at the tenth anniversary dinner for RT, the
international Russian TV network, with Flynn netting $33,750 after his
speakers’ bureau took its cut. Democrats treated this revelation as
important evidence about Russia buying influence in the Trump campaign
and White House. But the actual evidence suggests something quite
different.
Not only was the sum a relative trifle for a former senior U.S.
government official compared to, say, the fees collected by Bill and
Hillary Clinton, who often pulled in six to ten times more, especially
for speeches to foreign audiences. (Former President Clinton received
$500,000 for a Moscow speech from a Russian investment bank with ties to
the Kremlin, The New York Times reported in 2015,)
Yet, besides Flynn’s relatively modest speaking fee, The Washington Post reported that RT negotiated Flynn’s rate downward.
Deep inside its article on Flynn’s Russia-connected payments, the
Post wrote, “RT balked at paying Flynn’s original asking price. ‘Sorry
it took us longer to get back to you but the problem is that the
speaking fee is a bit too high and exceeds our budget at the moment,’
Alina Mikhaleva, RT’s head of marketing, wrote a Flynn associate about a
month before the event.”
So, if you accept the Democrats’ narrative that Russian President
Vladimir Putin is engaged in an all-out splurge to induce influential
Americans to betray their country, how do you explain that his supposed
flunkies at RT are quibbling with Flynn over a relatively modest
speaking fee?
Wouldn’t you think that Putin would have told RT’s marketing
department that the sky was the limit in paying off Flynn because the
ever-prescient Russian president knew from his Ouija board in 2015 that
Flynn would be the future national security adviser under President
Trump?
After all, it’s become one of Official Washington’s favorite
groupthinks that RT is nothing but a Russian propaganda front designed
to destroy the faith that Americans have in their democratic process –
as if the sleazy and shameful political campaigns financed with hundreds
of millions of dollars from billionaires need any help from RT.
reuters | U.S. Secretary of
State Rex Tillerson plans to skip a meeting with NATO foreign ministers
next month in order to stay home for a visit by China's president and
will go to Russia later in April, U.S. officials said on Monday,
disclosing an itinerary that allies may see as giving Moscow priority
over them.
Tillerson intends
to miss what would have been his first meeting of the 28 NATO allies on
April 5-6 in Brussels so that he can attend President Donald Trump's
expected April 6-7 talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping at Trump's
Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, four current and former U.S. officials
said.
Skipping the NATO meeting
and visiting Moscow could risk feeding a perception that Trump may be
putting U.S. dealings with big powers first, while leaving waiting those
smaller nations that depend on Washington for security, two former U.S.
officials said.
Trump has often
praised Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Tillerson worked with
Russia's government for years as a top executive at Exxon Mobil Corp,
and has questioned the wisdom of sanctions against Russia that he said
could harm U.S. businesses.
counterpunch |I want to move on to one of the issues people have been thinking
about today: in light of this new political context, I want to ask you
about the chapter in your book “K is for kleptocrat.” The new Trump
administration has done a number of things that people are concerned
about. With regard to the financial sector, they’ve rolled back the
feeble regulations of Dodd-Frank. The Republican Congress is looking
into an infrastructure project that largely looks to be a giveaway of
public funds to the private sector. This is to say nothing of the
president’s direct business interest, but I’m wondering what your
reaction is to the new administration. Also, there’s this idea that the
Trump administration represents something new. I was wondering what you
see that is new, versus what is more or less ‘business-as-usual’?
Michael Hudson: What’s new is that Trump said the emperor has no
clothes. He said, “You think you’re getting rich under Obama? You
haven’t got rich.” So when Hillary told her supporters to look and see
how much better off you are today than when Obama was elected, she made
herself look blind, referring only to the One Percent. All the growth in
the American economy from 2008 to 2016 accrued only to 5% of the
population – the richest. 95% of the population were worse off. Trump
saw the obvious – which you would think that any member of the 95% would
have seen. When Hillary tried to convince people they were better off,
Trump simply said, “Let’s look at reality: You’re worse off.”
Voters thought that if he could see that they’re worse off, he must
know how to cure it – instead of knowing how to make them even more
worse off. People wanted prosperity and Trump said NATO’s obsolete.
There’s no reason for us to maintain it—Russia’s not going to invade
Europe. Why should they invade? There’s no way any European country is
going to militarily invade another.
The new mode of warfare isn’t military anymore, it’s financial.
Russia and China realize that the United States is dissipating its
ability to conquer countries financially by spending its economic
surplus on military and the FIRE sector. Trump realized that as a real
estate developer, he’d been fighting banks all his life. There’s no love
there for the banks.
So the neocons are out to get him. They’re saying it is treason to
want peace instead of war. We need an enemy sufficient enough to justify
giving all the surplus to the upper 5% and spending it on the military.
If you don’t advocate doing that, you’re a traitor – to their fortunes. So they’re out to get rid of him.
Adam Simpson: As I understand it, he has promised to increase
military spending even without perhaps the enemy that Hillary would have
painted Russia to be.
Michael Hudson: On the one hand, he did say that. On the other hand
he said look we’re not going to spend so much money on Air Force One,
you’re overcharging it. We’re going to get rid of the F-35 fighter—it’s
cost almost a trillion dollars. He said that is a waste. We’re going to
get rid of the waste. But if you get rid of the waste and what’s not
necessary, you’re going to have lower military spending. So I don’t see
what Trump is going to spend more military money on.
peakprosperity | Nobel Prize-winning economist Angus Deaton recently agreed:
Income inequality is not killing capitalism
in the United States, but rent-seekers like the banking and the
health-care sectors just might, said Nobel-winning economist Angus Deaton on Monday.
If an entrepreneur invents something on the order of another
Facebook, Deaton said he has no problem with that person becoming
wealthy.
“What is not OK is for rent-seekers to get rich,” Deaton said in a luncheon speech to the National Association for Business Economics.
Rent seekers lobby and persuade governments to give them special favors.
Bankers during the financial crisis, and much of the health-care system, are two prime examples, Deaton said.
Rent-seeking not only does not generate new product, it actually slows down economic growth, Deaton said.
“All that talent is devoted to stealing things, instead of making things,” he said.
freakonomics | We tend to think of medicine as a science, but for most of human
history it has been scientific-ish at best. In the first episode of a
three-part series, we look at the grotesque mistakes produced by
centuries of trial-and-error, and ask whether the new era of
evidence-based medicine is the solution.
freakonomics | How do so many ineffective and even dangerous drugs make it to market? One reason is that clinical trials are often run on “dream patients” who aren’t representative of a larger population. On the other hand, sometimes the only thing worse than being excluded from a drug trial is being included.
freakonomics | By some estimates, medical error is the third-leading cause of death in the U.S. How can that be? And what’s to be done? Our third and final episode in this series offers some encouraging answers.
ZH | The percentage of people who are business owners relative to the overall employed population, is at an all time low.
The Fast Company,Shark Tank echo chamber would have you believe that entrepreneurialism is in a bubble.
It’s not.
Unprofitable, tech-centric gimmicks that are fueled by loosed monetary policies from the Fed are in a bubble. Legitimate businesses that produce cash flow and grow the middle class are not being created much, if at all.
Because the US has been waging war on the self-employed since the
1950’s, we not only have very few self-employed people in the workforce,
we also have multiple generations of journalists who have ZERO
experience engaging with those who run an actual business.
This is why NO ONE in the media gets Trump or the impact of his policies.
None of them have ever had to make payroll or create something from
nothing. They’ve spent the last eight years literally kowtowing to a man
who openly told the self-employed, “you didn’t build that.”
The same can be said for economists.
Time and again, you will see academics like Paul Krugman write op-eds
suggesting that Trump is going to collapse the economy. Krugman has
never once had to actually run a business. His entire career has been
one of writing the equivalent of glorified book reports for other people
who write glorified book reports to read.
If you ran a McDonalds or plumbing business implementing anything
Krugman claims, you’d be broke within six months. The man lives in a
world of excel spreadsheets and faculty meetings, not the world of
revenues and payroll.
So what is Trump doing?
First off, Trump is getting rid of regulations.
Economists don’t understand the impact of this because none of their
models include regulations. According to an economist, you simply “start
a business.” These people have no concept of the business costs of
licenses and the like.
Business owners care far more about regulations than taxes. Get ride
of stifling regulations and you can start growing your business more
aggressively.
I can tell you, business owners would happily pay more in
taxes if they were doing 50% more in revenues. No business owner feels
successful paying less in taxes on a business with zero growth.
Regarding taxes themselves, Trump understands them better than anyone in politics in the last 30 years.
Why?
Because as a business owner, Trump has been paying more taxes than
the media or politicians can believe. This is why the obsession with
Trump’s personal taxes is beyond moronic.
As a business owner, Trump has been paying taxes on property, payroll
tax, taxes on some products, excise taxes, and a slew of others than
journalists and economists don’t even know exist.
NewYorker | In 1993, when Nick Patterson mailed
Robert Mercer a job offer from Renaissance, Mercer threw it in the
trash: he’d never heard of the hedge fund. At the time, Mercer was part
of a team pioneering the use of computers to translate languages. I.B.M.
considered the project a bit of a luxury, and didn’t see its potential,
though the work laid the foundation for Google Translate and Apple’s
Siri. But Mercer and his main partner, Peter Brown, found the project
exciting, and had the satisfaction of showing up experts in the field,
who had dismissed their statistical approach to translating languages as
impractical. Instead of trying to teach a computer linguistic rules,
Mercer and Brown downloaded enormous quantities of dual-language
documents—including Canadian parliamentary records—and created code that
analyzed the data and detected patterns, enabling predictions of
probable translations. According to a former I.B.M. colleague, Mercer
was obsessive, and at one point took six months off to type into a
computer every entry in a Spanish-English dictionary. Sebastian Mallaby,
in his 2010 book on the hedge-fund industry, “More Money Than God,”
reports that Mercer’s boss at I.B.M. once jokingly called him an
“automaton.”
In 2014, Mercer
accepted a lifetime-achievement award from the Association for
Computational Linguistics. In a speech at the ceremony, Mercer, who grew
up in New Mexico, said that he had a “jaundiced view” of government.
While in college, he had worked on a military base in Albuquerque, and
he had showed his superiors how to run certain computer programs a
hundred times faster; instead of saving time and money, the bureaucrats
ran a hundred times more equations. He concluded that the goal of
government officials was “not so much to get answers as to consume the
computer budget.” Mercer’s colleagues say that he views the government
as arrogant and inefficient, and believes that individuals need to be
self-sufficient, and should not receive aid from the state. Yet, when
I.B.M. failed to offer adequate support for Mercer and Brown’s
translation project, they secured additional funding from DARPA,
the secretive Pentagon program. Despite Mercer’s disdain for “big
government,” this funding was essential to his early success.
Meanwhile,
Patterson kept asking Mercer and Brown to join Renaissance. He thought
that their technique of extracting patterns from huge amounts of data
could be applied to the pile of numbers generated daily by the global
trade in stocks, bonds, commodities, and currencies. The patterns could
generate predictive financial models that would give traders a decisive
edge.
medium | “This
is a propaganda machine. It’s targeting people individually to recruit
them to an idea. It’s a level of social engineering that I’ve never seen
before. They’re capturing people and then keeping them on an emotional
leash and never letting them go,” said professor Jonathan Albright.
Albright,
an assistant professor and data scientist at Elon University, started
digging into fake news sites after Donald Trump was elected president.
Through extensive research and interviews with Albright and other key
experts in the field, including Samuel Woolley, Head of Research at
Oxford University’s Computational Propaganda Project, and Martin Moore,
Director of the Centre for the Study of Media, Communication and Power
at Kings College, it became clear to Scout that this phenomenon was
about much more than just a few fake news stories. It was a piece of a
much bigger and darker puzzle — a Weaponized AI Propaganda Machine being
used to manipulate our opinions and behavior to advance specific
political agendas.
By
leveraging automated emotional manipulation alongside swarms of bots,
Facebook dark posts, A/B testing, and fake news networks, a company
called Cambridge Analytica has activated an invisible machine that preys
on the personalities of individual voters to create large shifts in
public opinion. Many of these technologies have been used individually
to some effect before, but together they make up a nearly impenetrable
voter manipulation machine that is quickly becoming the new deciding
factor in elections around the world.
Most
recently, Analytica helped elect U.S. President Donald Trump, secured a
win for the Brexit Leave campaign, and led Ted Cruz’s 2016 campaign
surge, shepherding him from the back of the GOP primary pack to the
front.
The
company is owned and controlled by conservative and alt-right interests
that are also deeply entwined in the Trump administration. The Mercer
family is both a major owner of Cambridge Analytica and one of Trump’s
biggest donors. Steve Bannon, in addition to acting as Trump’s Chief
Strategist and a member of the White House Security Council, is a
Cambridge Analytica board member. Until recently, Analytica’s CTO was
the acting CTO at the Republican National Convention.
Presumably
because of its alliances, Analytica has declined to work on any
democratic campaigns — at least in the U.S. It is, however, in final
talks to help Trump manage public opinion around his presidential
policies and to expand sales for the Trump Organization. Cambridge
Analytica is now expanding aggressively into U.S. commercial markets and
is also meeting with right-wing parties and governments in Europe,
Asia, and Latin America.
Cambridge Analytica isn’t the only company that could pull this off — but it is the most powerful right now. Understanding
Cambridge Analytica and the bigger AI Propaganda Machine is essential
for anyone who wants to understand modern political power, build a
movement, or keep from being manipulated. The Weaponized AI
Propaganda Machine it represents has become the new prerequisite for
political success in a world of polarization, isolation, trolls, and
dark posts.
thesaker | Okay, so I am not being honest with this title. But hey, since
Harvard does list my blog as a ‘fake news’ source, I might as well
indulge, at least once, into some absolutely shameless click baiting and
“fake newsing” :-)
What a fall from grace, really. Harvard University, arguably THE
symbol of US academia, has now joined such “prestigious” (not) actors
like CNN or the BBC in the ideological scramble to discredit free
information sources. For somebody like me who studied in US colleges
and who got two degrees in the USA, it is really sad.
paulcraigroberts | What is scary about the US and Europe is not merely the gullibility
and insouciance of such a large percentage of the populations. What is
very frightening is the willingness of the media, government officials,
military, and members of professional organizations to lie for the sake
of their careers. Try to find any shame among the liars that their lies
expose humanity to thermo-nuclear annihilation. It is not to be found.
They don’t care. Just let me have the Mercedes and the McMansion for
another year.
The Saker, an observant being, says that the color revolution being
conducted by the neoconservatives, the Democratic Party, the
presstitutes, the liberal/progressive/left, and by some Republicans
against President Trump is “de-legitimizing the entire [democratic]
political process which brought Trump to power and upon which the United
States is built as a society.” http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/46658.htm
The consequence, says The Saker, is that “the illusion of democracy and
people power” has been destroyed both domestically and abroad. The
propaganda picture of “American Democracy” has lost its believability.
As the false picture crumbles, so does the power that was based on
authority constructed by propaganda.
The Saker asks: do we face an endless horror or a horrible end?
As George Orwell said decades ago, “In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
This is the way the criminals who rule us see it, and it is the way
their whores in the media see it. If you tell the truth in America, you
are a purveyor of fake news and possibly a traitor.
libertyblitzkrieg | " I note the senator from Kentucky leaving the floor without justification or any rationale for the action he has just taken. That
is really remarkable, that a senator blocking a treaty that is
supported by the overwhelming number, perhaps 98—at least—of his
colleagues would come to the floor and object and walk away.
The only conclusion you can draw when he walks away is he has no
justification for his objection to having a small nation be part of NATO
that is under assault from the Russians. So I repeat again, the senator from Kentucky is now working for Vladimir Putin."
This video should alarm all Americans. McCain is accusing a fellow
Senator of disloyalty and allegiance to a foreign power simply because
he disagrees with him. It’s remarkably similar to what we saw Adam
Schiff do a few months ago in an embarrassing interview with Tucker
Carlson.
hotair | Via the Daily Wire,
that’s quite a claim. The president of the United States using a
foreign intelligence agency to spy on the other party’s presidential
candidate, for the obviously illicit purpose of erasing any domestic
paper trail of his actions? “Scandal of the decade” material. And yet it
falls not to the Fox News investigative team to break the story but to
legal commentator Andrew Napolitano — and not on one of Fox’s marquee
shows like O’Reilly or Tucker but on Fox & Friends and Martha
MacCallum’s program. You’d think a scoop like this would be in 50-point
font on the Fox website, but as I write this at around 4:45 ET, they’re
leading with a story about a probe of IT staffers who work for House Democrats. How come?
Sean Davis thinks this is a game of telephone gone bad inspired by the “Trump dossier,” which was compiled by a British ex-spy. Could be. It gains some plausibility from the fact that the U.S. and UK are part of the “Five Eyes” intelligence-sharing arrangement, which of course includes the NSA and GCHQ
(Britain’s NSA). It’ll also seem a bit more credible than it might have
in light of the surprise resignation in January of Robert Hannigan as
head of the GCHQ. Hannigan stepped down three days after Trump’s
inauguration, ostensibly for personal reasons, having served just two
years on the job. With news swirling at the time about the Trump
dossier, some Brits speculated
that the real reason he resigned might have been “related to British
concerns over shared intelligence with the US in the wake of Donald
Trump becoming president.” On top of all that, the Times reported
just two weeks ago that two foreign intelligence agencies, the British
and the Dutch, had provided intelligence on meetings allegedly held last
year between Trump “associates” and Russian officials in European
cities.
rutherford | “The first and most important thing to understand about politics is
this: forget Right, Left, Center, socialism, fascism, or democracy.
Every government that exists — or ever existed, or ever will exist — is a
kleptocracy, meaning ‘rule by thieves.’ Competing ideologies merely
provide different excuses to separate the Productive Class from what
they produce. If the taxpayer/voters won’t willingly fork over to end
poverty, then maybe they’ll cough up to fight drugs or terrorism.
Conflicting ideologies, as presently constituted, are nothing more than a
cover for what’s really going on, like the colors of competing gangs.” —
Author L. Neil Smith
The American kleptocracy (a government ruled by thieves) continues to
suck the American people down a rabbit hole into a parallel universe in
which the Constitution is meaningless, the government is all-powerful,
and the citizenry is powerless to defend itself against government
agents who steal, spy, lie, plunder, kill, abuse and generally inflict
mayhem and sow madness on everyone and everything in their sphere.
This begs the question: if the government is overstepping its
authority, abusing its power, and disregarding the rule of law but no
one seems to notice—and no one seems to care—does it matter if the
government has become a tyrant?
Here’s my short answer: when government wrongdoing ceases to matter, America will have ceased to be.
Just consider the devastation wrought in one week in the life of our American kleptocracy:
activistpost | WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange suggested on Twitter Tuesday Hillary
Clinton and certain unnamed members of the U.S. Intelligence Community
are plotting a takeover by Vice President Mike Pence.
“Clinton stated privately this month that she is quietly pushing for a Pence takeover,” Assange tweeted. “She stated that Pence is predictable hence defeatable.”
Clinton stated privately this month that she is
quietly pushing for a Pence takeover. She stated that Pence is
predictable hence defeatable.
“Two IC officials close to Pence stated privately this month that they are planning on a Pence takeover,” he added in another tweet. “Did not state if Pence agrees.”
Two IC officials close to Pence stated privately
this month that they are planning on a Pence takeover. Did not state if
Pence agrees.
Further, he continued, “By handing unilateral power to
the CIA over its drone strikes at this time White House signals that
bullying, disloyalty & incompetence pays.”
By handing unilateral power to the CIA over its
drone strikes at this time White House signals that bullying, disloyalty
& incompetence pays
In response to shocked reactions to the tweets, Pence lambasted Assange’s suggestion of a takeover as “absurd” and “frankly offensive” in an interview with radio host Laura Ingraham
The object of this fear and loathing? An obscure essay (now available only on web archives) titled "The Integration of Theory and Practice: A Program for the New Traditionalist Movement,"
written in 2001 by Eric Heubeck, a former associate of the late Paul
Weyrich at the Free Congress Foundation. Not only has his essay been
removed from Free Congress's website, but Heubeck has apparently
withdrawn from public life, as this author has not been able to contact
him.
In the estimation of Yurica and her fellow leftists, Integration concretely articulates a plan developed by "Christian Theocrats" to seize political power and use it forcefully to dismantle the domain of liberalism (secularism, welfare, multiculturalism, affirmative action, etc.) and enforce a fundamentalist Christian order in America. In brief, Yurica sees Integration as an American, Christian version of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
This is the full meaning of the smear term "Dominionism" coined by the left. As Yurica sees it, this evil plan is well on its way to victory; one can visualize her shuddering as she imagines jackbooted, goose-stepping "Theocrats" chanting "Sieg Heil!"
kansascity | Vice President Mike Pence has been pushing for Kansas Gov. Sam
Brownback to land a job in President Donald Trump’s administration,
according to sources.
Brownback would not comment on a possible
appointment during his first public appearance since reports that he is
under consideration to become U.S. ambassador to the United Nations for
food and agriculture, a post that is based in Rome.
Pence, a
former congressman who served as governor of Indiana, is close to
Brownback and has been advocating to find him a job in the
administration, according to several people familiar with the situation
but not authorized to speak publicly as a matter of practice. Trump has
considered Brownback for several jobs but has not yet offered one.
Brownback
said in August that Trump’s decision to choose Pence as his running
mate had helped persuade him to support Trump’s candidacy despite his
initial reservations. Brownback went onto serve on Trump’s agricultural
and Catholic advisory committees.
“Mike, I know well,” Brownback
said in August. “He’s a good man. He’s a man of faith. I have confidence
in Gov. Pence, and you know elections are about choices in
policy...What he’s shown in the picking of Pence is a willingness to get
good people around him, and you’ve got to realize that’s the way a
nation is run.”
The two men have shared staffers over the years.
Brownback’s former chief of staff, David Kensinger, served as a
consultant on Pence’s 2012 gubernatorial campaign shortly after stepping
down from his post in the Brownback administration.
The Star’s
sources say that talks between Brownback and the Trump administration
are ongoing, but the governor refused to clarify the matter Thursday.
“I’m
just not going to make any comments about any of that. I’m glad to see
the administration off to a strong start on job creation and security
issues, which is the key things they ran on, but I’m not making comments
about it,” Brownback said Thursday after handing out a humanitarian
award to a Kansas physician.
Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/news/politics-government/article137424678.html#storylink=cpy
Celebrating 113 years of Mama Rosa McCauley Parks
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*February 4, 1913 -- February 4, 2026*
*Some notes: The life of the courageous activist Mama Rosa McCauley Parks*
Mama Rosa's grandfather Sylvester Ed...
Monsters are people too
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Comet 3I/Atlas is on its way out on a hyberbolic course to, I don't know
where. I do know that 1I/Oumuamua is heading for the constellation Pegasus,
and ...
Remembering the Spanish Civil War
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This year marks the 90th anniversary of the launch of the Spanish Civil
War, an epoch-defining event for the international working class, whose
close study...
Return of the Magi
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Lately, the Holy Spirit is in the air. Emotional energy is swirling out of
the earth.I can feel it bubbling up, effervescing and evaporating around
us, s...
Covid-19 Preys Upon The Elderly And The Obese
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sciencemag | This spring, after days of flulike symptoms and fever, a man
arrived at the emergency room at the University of Vermont Medical Center.
He ...
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(Damn, has it been THAT long? I don't even know which prompts to use to
post this)
SeeNew
Can't get on your site because you've gone 'invite only'?
Man, ...
First Member of Chumph Cartel Goes to Jail
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With the profligate racism of the Chumph Cartel, I don’t imagine any of
them convicted and jailed is going to do too much better than your run of
the mill ...
