February 23, 2017

Lawyers: ICE detainee with brain tumor removed from hospital

Source: The Hill

An undocumented immigrant diagnosed with a brain tumor while under Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody was returned to a detention center from a Texas hospital, her lawyers said.

The woman, a Salvadoran national identified only as Sara, was released from Huguley Hospital in Fort Worth, Texas, and taken to Prairieland Detention Center against her will, according to her lawyers.

"She told us they tied her hands and ankles in her condition," Melissa Zuniga, a member of Sara's legal team, told The Hill. "She's complaining of a lot of pain."

Zuniga said Sara, 26, was cut off from communication with her family and lawyers, even after the hospital and ICE had cleared Sara's mother for unrestricted phone access.

Read more: http://thehill.com/latino/320755-lawyers-ice-detainee-with-brain-tumor-removed-from-hospital

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welcome to Trump's America... now I'm sure someone will say this sort of thing happened under Obama, but there's no doubt that this will get worse under Trump.

February 23, 2017

Trump is right about the media being the enemy of the American people

In an ironic way, Trump is right about the media being the enemy of the American people. The main reason is that the media is the number 1 reason we have Trump, and he is absolutely the enemy of the American people.

Of course, the media is not a monolith and some news outlets are far better and more responsible than others, but Trump actually shares an amazing number of features with the worst of the corporate media:
1) sensationalism
2) superficiality
3) refusal to talk about climate change, a massively important issue
4) over-hyping of Islamic-based terrorism
5) pro-corporation, pro-capitalism
6) little regard for the environment
7) ratings-driven
8) cheer leader for US wars and US war crimes
9) glorification of US soldiers and the military

He really is a creature of the worst of our media.

February 18, 2017

The Rise of the Weaponized AI Propaganda Machine-- and how it led to Trump's election

https://medium.com/join-scout/the-rise-of-the-weaponized-ai-propaganda-machine-86dac61668b#.uhu4i5o8o

This is disturbing as hell... Dems need to figure out how to use this or beat it.

There’s a new automated propaganda machine driving global politics. How it works and what it will mean for the future of democracy.

By Berit Anderson and Brett Horvath

This piece was originally published at Scout.ai.

“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.

February 18, 2017

I'm obsessed with the fact that the President of the US is out of his mind

Am I wrong?

I can't stop thinking about this. I don't know why everyone ISN'T talking about this.

I'm really WORRIED.


This is just so freaking BONKERS, BARKING MAD, I can't take it anymore.


https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/832708293516632065

February 17, 2017

Dear Republicans-- you've elected a blithering idiot for president

A dotty old racist asshole.

What else can anyone say at this point?

Whatever goes wrong in this country from this point on is entirely on you.

Remember nuclear holocausts are bad-- they are the worst!

God help us all.

February 14, 2017

Nixon "I'm not a crook"

Note how he says he never profited off the presidency...

February 12, 2017

Search #kakistocracy on twitter and see what pops up!

Someone did a good job.

https://twitter.com/hashtag/kakistocracy?src=hash

February 7, 2017

Donald Trump's staff get him to agree to policies by saying 'Obama wouldn't have done it'

Source: UK Independent

Military officials got Donald Trump to agree to the botched Yemen raid by suggesting Barack Obama would never have had the courage to do it, it has been reported.

The raid, which had been planned for two months before Mr Trump’s arrival in the Oval Office, killed 30 civilians and one US Navy SEAL but failed to kill its alleged target, al Qaeda leader Qassim al Rimi.
(snip)

Mr Obama had reportedly been told about the plan to kill al Rimi, who took over control of the Yemeni affiliate of the terror organisation in 2015, but held off approving it because his advisors had wanted to wait until a moonless night which would not have happened again till after he left office, the New York Times reported.

But Defence Secretary, General James "Mad Dog" Mattis, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Joseph Dunford, reportedly convinced Mr Trump to go ahead with the raid by suggesting Mr Obama would never have been so bold as to actually go through with it.

Read more: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-yemen-raid-agree-to-policy-barack-obama-would-not-do-james-matthis-qassim-al-rimi-a7566861.html

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Good god, these people are INSANE! All of them!

February 5, 2017

Super Bowl Poll!!!

Who are you rooting for in the Super Bowl???

You may or may not know that the Patriots are surrogates for Trump, and the Falcons are surrogates for the Trump opposition (also their fan base is a huge black community in Atlanta, and their representative is John Lewis-D).

It's being played in Houston, which is very pro-immigrant too!

February 2, 2017

Trump's disastrous first military strike had previously been rejected by Obama

Source: The Week

Saturday's Navy SEAL raid in Yemen — which resulted in the death of an 8-year-old American girl — had previously been rejected by former President Barack Obama, The Guardian reports. President Donald Trump approved of the raid in his first military strike as commander-in-chief:

[Colonel John] Thomas said he did not know why the prior administration did not authorize the operation, but said the Obama administration had effectively exercised a "pocket veto" over it.

A former official said the operation had been reviewed several times, but the underlying intelligence was not judged strong enough to justify the risks, and the case was left to the incoming Trump administration to make its own judgment. [The Guardian]

Yemeni officials say at least 10 women and children were also killed, including the 8-year-old daughter of U.S.-born Anwar al-Awlaki, a senior leader of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula who was himself slain a 2011 drone strike. Read more about how things went wrong here. Jeva Lange

Read more: http://theweek.com/speedreads/677442/trumps-disastrous-first-military-strike-previously-been-rejected-by-obama

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surprise!