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U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a meeting with airline executives in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Thursday, Feb. 9, 2017. Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images

When the term "fake news" burst onto the scene during the presidential election, most of the examples the media referred to came from right-wing sites and networks, alleging all kinds of horrible things done by Hillary Clinton and/or the left: murders, child sex-abuse rings operating underneath pizza parlors, and more.

If Donald Trump was mentioned in these fake stories, it was usually in a complimentary way, like the one about Pope Francis endorsing his campaign, or one that said he sent his private plane to pick up 200 starving Marines.

But liberal sites and networks are no strangers to fabricated news for the simple reason that the desire to believe something that caters to our existing prejudices isn't restricted by political ideology. And according to an editor who works for the fact-checking site Snopes, liberal versions of fake news are growing in popularity.

Of course, the term "fake news" has also grown to encompass not just outright hoaxes created by dubious websites, but also stories in the mainstream media that turn out to be based on inaccuracies or suffer from extreme ideological spin.

In the latest example, former journalist and Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal wrote an essay in the highly-regarded London Review of Books, in which (among many other things) he described how Donald Trump's father Fred had commissioned a couple of racist TV ads during his run for mayor of New York in 1969.

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Blumenthal talked about how the first ad portrayed a black drug addict terrorizing a neighborhood. But as both the Washington Post and Politico have pointed out , the videos are fakes, created by a husband-and-wife team of videographers as an exercise in social commentary. Also, there's no evidence that Trump's father ever ran for mayor.

Clinton's former aide isn't the only one to fall for this kind of fake related to Trump's father. During the election campaign, an image was circulated on social media that allegedly showed the senior Trump (who was also a New York real estate developer) wearing a Ku Klux Klan robe. That picture is also a fake.

Why were people so quick to believe the photo? Because Fred Trump was once arrested after a KKK rally, and is also said to have held racist views, so the photo seemed to confirm something that was already widely believed by critics of Trump. The same goes for Blumenthal and the videosthey appeared to confirm something that many people already believed was true.

Many of the other "fake news" stories believed and shared by critics of Trump fall into a similar pattern. One that got a lot of play on social media was a New York Times story that claimed Rick Perry didn't really understand the office he was about to assume, after Trump named him Secretary of Energy.

The Times ' story alleged that Perry didn't know the Department of Energy also had responsibility for nuclear weapons. But the only quoted source in the story later said his comments were taken out of context, and a statement was later produced that was signed by Perry in which he appeared to be well aware of the department's nuclear responsibilities.

The New York Times has said that it stands by its reporting on that story, and that it had other sources besides the one named in the piece. But even if it was inaccurate, many people clearly wanted to believe it, because it fit their existing preconceptions about how unfit for office many of Trump's nominees are.

Apple CEO Tim Cook Says Fake News Must Be Tackled

More recently, a story was widely shared on Facebook and other social networks that claimed police officers had burned a camp of indigenous activists protesting the Dakota Access pipeline. The story included a photo that appeared to show hundreds of tipis burning. The story was completely untrue, however, and the picture was from an HBO film from 2007.

The immigration order that President Trump signed blocking travel from seven predominantly Muslim countries also caused a rash of fake stories, including one that showed a 5-year-old in handcuffs at an airport. But the picture was from 2015.

A number of stories shared both during the campaign and after purported to show evidence of racist attacks or abuse as a result of Trump's candidacy, including a student who had her hijab stolen on the subway, and a man who said he was thrown off an airplane after speaking with his mother in Arabic. The woman lied, and the man turned out to be a well-known YouTube prankster.

A Washington Post story that claimed the Russians had hacked into the U.S. electrical grid also turned out to be untrue.

Another story that was widely shared involved a Jewish family that said they had to leave their home and go into hiding after their son asked to be excused from performing in a Christmas nativity play, and they were subjected to abuse. As it turned out, the family had gone on a vacation trip that was previously scheduled.

As Snopes editor Brooke Binkowski noted in her interview with The Atlantic , if a story triggers a strong emotion in you, like rage, "then you probably need to check it against something else," because it may have been deliberately created to have that effect. And that's advice that applies to readers and social-media users across the political spectrum.

Read more here:
Liberals Are Just as Guilty of Falling for Fake News as Conservatives - Fortune

Welcome to #First100Days!

The #First100Days series will bear witness to the next 13 weeks of the Trump administration and the climate in America and then respond openly in writing, dialogue, and debate in the hopes of fostering better communication among writers and partisans alike (although the essays and pieces do not have to be political in nature). Were looking to help give voice to honest and thematic essays from all layers of the political spectrum and across all GMP sections.

All opinions are those of the author and not necessarily of Good Men Media, The Good Men Project, or our editors.

Snowflake.

Libtard.

Trump that Bitch.

Coastal elites.

In the months since the election weve read and researched all of the polling data, articles, and profiles of the election and talked with scores of conservative voters regarding why they wanted Trump.

But liberals and moderates havebeen hard pressed to get the same in return.

Why is that?

Where is the Understanding the Hillary Voter or How can Liberals think that way expose and articles?

Instead its been the oppositeliberals reaching out to understand the electoral college and why Americansespecially low-educated white menchose what liberals feel is the worst President ever.

So whats going on?

Is this the case of the nerds wondering why the bully is the bully (and the bully not caring) or a case of the bully getting beat and the nerds not caring to understand why the bully feels shame and embarrassment?

Or is it something completely different, like the brains, lifestyle, and hard-held beliefs of voters?

Let us in on your truthwrite for us.

See original here:
Why Don't Men Care Enough to 'Figure Out' the Liberals? (#First100Days) - The Good Men Project

During the fall campaign, supporters of Hillary Clinton charged that there would be violence in the streets after the election. They were right, but it's not the violence they had in mind. They thought that angry Donald Trump supporters would riot, assault people they thought were Clinton supporters or Muslims or immigrants. But we haven't seen much of that, and not just because Trump won the election; it turns out that several highly publicized reports of post-election attacks on Muslims by apparent Trump supporters were hoaxes, without a grain of truth (including this one).

But there's been plenty of violence coming from the anti-Trump left side of the political spectrum. The most shocking violence came on Feb. 1 at and near the campus oft the University of California at Berkeley, where 150 masked demonstrators destroyed an estimated $100,000 of property, assaulted individuals and caused the cancellation of a speech by the gay conservative provocateur and Breitbart writer Milo Yiannapoulous while the Berkeley police cowered inside a building, a procedure the University of California Police Department director lamely defended. She noted that complaints came from outside the East Bay area, but that the locals an overwhelmingly left-wing constituency seemed content with the police non-performance.

What the police failed to confront was an organized riot involving an estimated 150 or more black-masked people armed with bricks, sledgehammers, smoke bombs, fireworks and pepper spray. The rioters did additional damage to private property adjacent to the campus; those sledgehammers come in handy if you are out to smash ATM machines. Alleged organizers, including a Berkeley law school graduate, expressed satisfaction with the results, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. "We are happy with the results. We were able to meet Mr. Yiannapoulos' fascist message with massive resistance." In other words, freedom of speech is not to be allowed; violence to shut down free speech is to be applauded.

One organization claiming credit for the violence is called By Any Means Necessary; one spokesman, Berkeley middle school teacher Yvette Felarca, called the riot "a stunning achievement." As she told KTVU, "I was there, and there were thousands of people out there who were united. It was a mass protest, it was a militant protest, and everyone was there to shut him down. And so whatever it was going to take to do that, we were all there with a united cause, and we were stunningly successful."

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As Glenn Reynolds of instapundit.com, a law professor at the University of Tennessee, suggests, this organized violence violates federal civil rights statutes, which authorize suits for money damages from conspirators to deprive others of their civil rights. And don't think it was only property that suffered. Here's an account from the indefatigable John Leo of how a woman and her husband with tickets to the Yiannapoulos event were beaten up by black-masked thugs.

Riot leaders like those quoted above justify their violence as a response to fascism. But if there is anything that looks like fascism in America today, it's what happened on the campus and in the streets of Berkeley, right down to the dark uniforms of the thugs.

The response of liberal politicians? So far as I know, there has been almost none. At the Powerline blog John Hinderaker links to a Grabien video showing Democratic politicians and celebrities making statements that some may take as endorsements of violence, such as Sen. Tim Kaine's urging followers to "fight in the streets." I suspect he would claim that he was speaking metaphorically and only urging peaceful protest. But it would be nice if he could find time to condemn the violence we have seen at Berkeley and which is increasingly unsurprising on our college and university campuses, which have become the part of our society most hostile to free speech.

Perhaps I have missed some statements by liberal politicians or entertainers denouncing Berkeley-style violence; I would be grateful to readers who could pass along any examples. But I fear they will be hard to come by.

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Read more:
Do liberals care about fascist-style violence in Berkeley ... - Washington Examiner

THE fragile alliance between Colin Barnett and Brendon Grylls was at breaking point last night after it emerged the Liberals had put a preference deal to One Nation which potentially delivered Pauline Hanson the balance of power in the WA Parliament.

Details of the controversial deal were confirmed by senior Liberals yesterday, with Nationals claiming privately they had been double crossed.

Under the plan, the Liberals would preference One Nation above the Nationals in the Upper House country regions, and in return, they are demanding One Nation would preference the Liberals above Labor in all Lower House seats they were contesting.

The Liberals will preference the Nationals first in every Lower House seat they are running, but have promised One Nation they will not be placed last on their ballot papers.

A Liberal source said the party had learnt a lesson from the 2001 election, when then Liberal leader Richard Courts administration put One Nation last on its ballot papers.

Pauline Hanson retaliated in that election by preferencing against Liberal incumbents a move which cost the Liberals government. Nationals leader Brendon Grylls yesterday refused to comment.

But National sources told The Sunday Times yesterday that some MPs were so incensed by the Liberals preference deal that they believed the alliance should be broken.

Nationals sources said the preference deal could result in them losing one or two of their current five seats in the Legislative Council, potentially delivering Pauline Hanson the balance of power in the six-region Upper House.

But Liberals were unsympathetic to the plight of their Government partners.

Liberals remembered with clarity how Mr Grylls demanded that $1 billion-a-year be spent in the bush as part of his demands to form an alliance with the Liberals in 2008.

And they were still fuming that Mr Grylls had at one stage also sought to form Government with Labor in 2008 something seasoned Liberals have never forgiven him for.

Liberals also pointed out that in the 2008 election the Nationals in all country Upper House regions had preferenced the Christian Democrats, Family First and One Nation ahead of the Liberals and that in 2013 both the Nationals and Liberals preferenced the Christian Democrats, Family First and Shooters and Fishers ahead of each other.

Liberals told The Sunday Times the preference deal was designed to stem the bleeding in Lower House seats, which would determine whether Mr Barnett retained government.

Current polling shows the Liberals could lose 14 Lower House seats on March 11 enough to hand Labor leader Mark McGowan victory.

This is a ballsy move by the Liberal Party after four years of being held captive by the WA Nationals, a senior Liberal source said.

This is an important first step in ensuring the Nationals are no longer relevant at a State or Federal level.

And in another slap in the face for the Nationals, a senior Liberal source said one idea which could be seriously looked at was commissioning Liberal operatives to hand out how-to-vote-cards to voters on behalf of One Nation.

You have to have the manpower to distribute how to vote cards on election days and during pre-polls, a source said.

If this is to be a winning strategy we will have to man up and get people on polling booths and in the pre-poll, which is during the two weeks running into the election.

If the Liberal Party gets really desperate, it will ask its polling booth people to hand out One Nation how-to-vote cards.

Preferences are expected to play a major role in this knife-edge election.

As revealed by The Sunday Times last month, Ms Hanson had been courted by senior Liberals for months, with WA Liberal senator Michaelia Cash and her husband even taking Ms Hanson and her chief-of-staff to dinner when she arrived in Perth in December, later driving her to the airport.

While Labor was adamant it would not do a preference deal with Ms Hanson, Liberal State director Andrew Cox and State president Norman Moore had met with her on several occasions to hatch a deal.

So important are preferences this election, that Preference Whisperer Glen Druery flew to Perth this week to speak to a swarm of independents and micro parties who are keen for success.

Mr Druery yesterday warned a Liberal move to preference One Nation might actually backfire by alienating their voters.

Polling that I have seen suggests that 20-30 per cent of Liberal (voters) will desert the party if they deal with One Nation, Mr Druery said.

A desperate and wounded animal is often a dangerous one and is often dangerous to itself.

I think any preference deal that the Liberals, or any of the major parties do with One Nation, will be very dangerous for the party which perpetrates the deal.

Mr Barnett, who in February warned voters against voting One Nation, yesterday declined to comment.

But an unrepentant Andrew Cox told The Sunday Times the Liberal Party will leave no stone unturned to ensure Colin Barnett and the Liberals are returned.

Original post:
WA Election 2017: WA Liberals do preference deal with One Nation - Perth Now

Posted February 11, 2017 17:25:02

The WA Greens say polling shows 33 per cent of Liberal voters will not support the party if it does a preferences deal with One Nation.

The results of the Essential poll of 2,000 people have been revealed as the Liberal Party State Executive considers the issue.

Upper House candidate for North Metropolitan region Alison Xamon said the Greens were putting One Nation last, and so should the Liberals.

"One Nation has no place in this Parliament and the last thing they need is any leg-ups from the Liberal Party," she said.

"They need to be completely rethinking how they're approaching their dealings with One Nation we're not doing any deals with One Nation, and in fact we are putting One Nation last and recommending our voters put One Nation last."

Ms Xamon rejected suggestions Pauline Hanson's party had changed.

"One Nation is as racist as they always were," she said.

"They've always attacked the first Australians, Aboriginal Australians, they've attacked people who have come here from Asia, they're attacking the Jewish community, and now they're attacking people from Islamic backgrounds," she said.

"It's not acceptable, we are a multicultural country, this is something which should be celebrated and cohesion needs to be protected and One Nation has no place here.

"I'll be very, very clear Pauline Hanson does not speak for me."

The Greens used their state election campaign launch to announce their policy on donations reform, claiming wealthy interest groups and vested interests were undermining the political system.

Ms Xamon said the Greens wanted to limit lobbyists' powers and the influence of developers.

"We need to have dramatic reform of our donations laws and that's something that the Greens are going very hard on," she said.

"We want to have a banning of donations particularly from for-profit corporations, mining companies, polluters because we think that that's twisting the policies of government."

Ms Xamon said the Greens would continue to seek reform in other key areas.

"Making sure that we have sustainable cities, looking at renewable energy targets, sustainability around water and housing and transport are really critically important," she said.

"But also making sure that we've got different approaches to law and order, and ensuring that we've got appropriate services for people who are in need, particularly people with mental illness, people with disability, tackling racism.

"We need to really rethink the way we're approaching jobs and training and worker safety."

The Greens currently only have two members in the Legislative Council, and none in the Legislative Assembly.

The party suffered a swing against it in the 2013 election.

Ms Xamon said she was confident the party would improve its position.

"Every single party has its ebbs and flows, and there's no doubt at all certainly since 2013, the Greens vote has continued to climb back up again, we're expecting we're going to have pretty good representation in the West Australian Parliament," she said.

Topics: greens, one-nation, polls, government-and-politics, elections, liberals, wa

View original post here:
WA election: Greens say One Nation preference deal will lose Liberals votes - ABC Online