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Ladies and Gentlemen, Our Corporate Anthem

“One of the questions in my mind is why – why is it that the Democratic party fails so badly in this area. Is it a lack of will or is it a lack of commitment to the principles? Or, is it the money?”

I think it is, in part, lack of practice and lack of experience.

With so few liberal or progressive voices in the mainstream broadcast and cable media, our pundits just don’t get enough practice at framing issues and fine-tuning the delivery. Preaching to an empty room only improves ones’ skills so much…

I’ve been forming some thoughts on countering Ayn Rand economics and ways to go about it. In short, Ayn Randians regard their doctrine as “inerrant.” It cannot possibly be wrong, and unfortunately their air of absolute certainty aids in the proliferation of their ideology and talking points.

That will probably be the subject of my first post.

» Posted By OppositionResearch On December 16, 2013 @ 10:05 am

A perfect example is right here:

http://www.chuckharder.com/

I used to listen to far right Chuck Harder some 18 years ago. When talking about multinational corporations and outsourcing, he sounds exactly like us.

But, as Harder’s website shows, it includes *classic* examples of scapegoating social aid recipients, immigrants, and “Communists” rather than the real villains. It is a *classic* example of playing to prejudice and resentment while the real bandits of America make a clean getaway.

Scarcity and hard times, whether natural or, ahem, artificially created, intensifies the “every man for himself” behavior that enriches the hyper-capitalist right.

Diabolical how it all fits together…. and exasperating when it doesn’t — as in Chuck Harder’s site.

» Posted By OppositionResearch On December 16, 2013 @ 7:22 am

Nice work!

In my opinion, the prizes for the most incredibly (and inadvertently) prophetic films ever go to the following:

Despotism (1946) by Encyclopedia Britannica Films
https://archive.org/details/Despotis1946

The second half of this film has fully materialized in the United States, and the realization of the scenario depicted in the first half is well under way.

And,

Don’t Be A Sucker (1947) by the US War Department
https://archive.org/details/DontBeaS1947

That could be any number of today’s right wing talking heads or politicians on that soapbox…

Both of these films leave me with that “Oh, my God” after-effect.

» Posted By OppositionResearch On December 15, 2013 @ 4:36 pm

AOL To Buy Delta Airlines: Will Require All Passengers to Fly Naked

Why, on your hat, like a state trooper. 😉

» Posted By OppositionResearch On December 17, 2013 @ 9:04 am

Wishing that we true… we’d fly Delta from now on!

My wife and I don’t just fight for freedom — we *use* it. 🙂

» Posted By OppositionResearch On December 17, 2013 @ 9:03 am

Hi there!

You don’t need HP. It’s hard to “get liberal views out there” in such an atmosphere of censorship and HP’s *infantile* inability to take criticism.

I had no trouble making a clean breakaway.

» Posted By OppositionResearch On December 17, 2013 @ 9:02 am

Huffington Post Goes NSA on Its Members

Indeed.

I would always rely on the text of the URL itself to better inform me of the contents of an article. I disregarded headlines completely.

» Posted By OppositionResearch On December 18, 2013 @ 8:06 am

What doesn’t add up with that FB policy is how on earth can a whole family verify (supposing that they should be foolhardy enough to do so)?

Each and every person of age 13 or over who wants to verify would have to get an individual mobile phone number, since FB only allows a mobile phone number to be used to verify one account.

Opposition based on ethics and right and wrong rarely deter corporate/government America — but physical obstacles are something that not even money can wish away.

– – –

I suspect collusion between HP and Facebook because I was able to associate a pre-policy change FB account to HP (for the sole purpose of recruiting people away) (and bogus, of course) with no trouble — but FB accounts created afterward are rejected by HP unless they are “verified.”

» Posted By OppositionResearch On December 17, 2013 @ 8:50 pm

When I was a child — yes, a *child* — my mom would ridicule it when I told there that there would be a massive data store on each and every person in the country.

“I told you so”…

» Posted By OppositionResearch On December 17, 2013 @ 8:45 pm

I’ve learned that it is impossible to overestimate the level of corporate interest in demanding our personal information.

Dunno where you live, but just try shopping in any drugstore. If you want the “Sale prices,” prepare to hand over your identity to the store’s “rewards card.”

Damn good thing that I was born with a savant memory. Nothing like knowing the phone numbers of about 20 defunct pay phones to give to such stores.

» Posted By OppositionResearch On December 17, 2013 @ 8:13 pm

I posted this piece that I wrote about how to guard yourself against data mining three times at a site that I thought was friendly to HP refugees.

It got HP’ed three times.

It left me scratching my head, wondering if there is anyone, anywhere to trust beyond myself.

Here it is:

http://forum.democratic2016.com/guarding-privacy/

Sometimes I want to start my own site again. Other times, I wonder if there is a point to trying to be the 16,777,216th blogger out there, and if it’s better to stick to something established.

Fortunately, Planet seems well established. So, I’ll wing it posting here, energy permitting, and see what sort of readership my posts can garner.

I suggest reading the writings of former right winger John Whitehead on the rise of the corporate/government alliance. One of the allures of privatization is the sidestepping of Constitutional boundaries the governments must honor.

Who needs NSA when a private entity like Facebook can gather and collate whatever the F it wants, and that golden data mine is just a subpoena away? If even that?

» Posted By OppositionResearch On December 17, 2013 @ 8:01 pm

Thanks for the Vanity Fair link. Others have shared the S.H.A.M.E. project link, and it was great reading.

» Posted By OppositionResearch On December 17, 2013 @ 11:02 am

Interesting thought about HP creating its own “troll problem” deliberately. It’s something that I hadn’t considered.

I do have a keen eye for patterns, and I did attribute the latest troll* influx to something highly organized. When a user who has only been registered for two *MONTHS* passes 1,000 “fans,” there is something very, very organized and automated taking place. (It took me two years to work up my 1,896.)

Another pattern that I noticed was the screen names consisting of meaningless but pronounceable gibberish, and the names terminated in strings of numbers. The first set of screen names always came with *very* highly polished avatars, the second set with none.

Whatever it was, it was obviously organized and electronically coordinated.

But the thought of HP generating it’s *own* right wing trolls (likely with built-in cross-fanning code) hadn’t occurred to me.

But now that you mention it, it makes sense. That *would* explain HP’s increasingly perceptible practice of *protecting* trolls to the point of practically white-listing them, while tuning the censoring algorithm to make it difficult for anyone to strike back at them.

*

Since the word “troll” *is* used loosely and often over-broadly, here is my definition:

* Troll (n): Someone who posts deliberately inciting or incendiary comments, loaded with generalizations but devoid of real content, and who are impossible to initiate any meaningful, substantive discussion with.

» Posted By OppositionResearch On December 17, 2013 @ 10:52 am

I noticed other subtle signs of rightward migration at HP…. or maybe I’m just hypersensitive?

Take the new “Third Metric, Redefining Success beyond money and power” section.

While I agree wholeheartedly with broadening the definition of success to include personal, human fulfillment — that which I have *emphatically* preached myself — wouldn’t HP’s promotion of that section also serve a right wing end? Wouldn’t it serve to talk people into settling for less in the way of wages, so that fewer people would be complaining so much about behind left behind economically by the 1%?

And, then there are those “nip slips” and “sideboobs.”

Ever notice how HP’s treatment of anything involving a boob, or nudity, or frolicking sexual behavior, is consistently treated as something bad? Something to be sensationalized in a negative fashion?

By constantly sensationalizing sexual freedom and quasi-“porn” as something negative or as a sign of bad character, and tempting people to haughtily agree with that assessment, isn’t that subconsciously furthering a right wing social agenda?

“Oh, by gawd, look at her, showing off her boobs again. What an uncouth tramp!”

As HP ventures further in to Jerry Springer land, the result is a subconscious reinforcement of right wing social ideas.

» Posted By OppositionResearch On December 17, 2013 @ 9:46 am

She was a columnist at Townhall, too

» Posted By OppositionResearch On December 15, 2013 @ 10:39 am

Even I have noticed how, on cue, each and every story in the “Tech” section doubled as an advertisement for the new iPhone.

And don’t get me going on those ads made to look like newsstory links or blog posts.

» Posted By OppositionResearch On December 14, 2013 @ 6:46 pm

One thing that I figured out under the previous comment system was that the censor machine could be personalized by HP on selected users.

Since I doubt that HP would *ever* give up a kind of control that they had become accustomed to, I can only assume that the unpopular new format has the same feature.

» Posted By OppositionResearch On December 14, 2013 @ 8:30 am

Welcome!

Now, would you please share the secret, since you’re no longer under the code of silence that HP clearly imposes…

How does/did one become an “ordained HP blogger?”

(I interpreted “HP Blogger” to mean a featured blogger whose comments appeared in super bright yellow. If you merely meant a commenter, please disregard.)

Not that I’d want to do it now, after such a gross betrayal, and not that they’d want a hard-hitting expert on the far right like myself, but… nobody has ever answered that question, surely because of some code of silence.

Now, on to the meat of your comment.

I have noted several times of late that HP appears to have begun taking the *SIDE* of the trolls. They let the vilest, most incendiary crap stand, while suppressing anyone who responds with the good, full-force verbal 2-by-4 that they deserve. To allow trolls to incite, but prevent people from hitting back, is a form of abuse in itself.

It makes little sense. HP would repeatedly censor long, insightful comments of mine (and they’d back off after I sternly warned, “you’ll tire before I do, HP, so give it up”) — yet the occasional comment where even I felt that I went over the top? By golly, it’s still there.

Either drop the moderation and allow us to bring our verbal 2-by-4s with nails, or moderate consistently and fairly. Fair moderation is a difficult line to walk, but it’s the only way that it works.

» Posted By OppositionResearch On December 14, 2013 @ 7:13 am

Reasons to avoid Facebook like the plague, especially when linked to sites like HP?

Same reasons as the comments in this absorbing LinkedIn discussion:

http://community.linkedin.com/questions/29749/how-can-i-stop-linkedin-from-mining-my-email-conta.html

My awareness of data mining shot way up when 1) I noticed that a company that previously had only my email address started greeting me by my first name, and 2) a company emailed me at one address, referring to me by a screen name used at another corporate site.

Riled, I immediately went on the hunt. I soon learned about operations like http://www.spokeo.com/ and http://www.tineye.com/ . Yes, that picture that you posted both on Facebook under your real name and at some other site under a pseudonym can point fingers at one another.

There is no such thing as being too guarded and circumspect on the Internet.

» Posted By OppositionResearch On December 13, 2013 @ 12:30 pm

Crap, what a thought…

And, what potential for civil liability. Those earlier comments were made under a different privacy agreement.

I know that I’ve posted some pretty nasty and damning facts there. (Sometimes, after several tries and a stiff warning, “You’ll tire before I do, HP. Give it up.”)

» Posted By OppositionResearch On December 13, 2013 @ 11:41 am

Funny, my first reason to boycott Facebook had nothing to do with data mining.

FB landed on my shit list during the flap over their censoring breastfeeding photos. Prudery is one of my bigger peeves.

Then, many years ago, some online friends goaded me to give it a try. as an alternate way to socialize. I did.

Almost immediately, I was bombarded with “people you may know.” “Whoa, whoa, whoa!!!” I thought to myself, because they really were people whom I knew. I never gave them that information. How did they know?

In the time that followed, I learned about how FB cross-references email addresses, and has contact list scraping agreements with AOL, Yahoo and the like. If you are on the contact list of a FB user who registered with such an email address, your email is already in FB’s cross reference. They just haven’t associated your email address with an actual user yet.

It’s bloody dangerous, IMHO. And, in light of the corporate-government alliance that former right-winger John Whitehead writes so eloquently about, who needs a fricken’ subpoena when your dossier is already in the hands of a giant corporate handmaiden like FB?

I haven’t used that FB account in eight years, and I don’t plan to resume.

» Posted By OppositionResearch On December 13, 2013 @ 10:49 am

Thanks to you both

» Posted By OppositionResearch On December 13, 2013 @ 10:19 am

Facebook is data mining and cross-referencing on steroids.

Avoid it for anything that can be attached to real life.

—-

And, I’m trying to figure out how in the world to upload an avatar. There is no facility to do so in “Edit profile.”

» Posted By OppositionResearch On December 13, 2013 @ 9:44 am

Yup, $29 million of his own money poured into his campaign. He took some heat for that.

» Posted By OppositionResearch On December 13, 2013 @ 9:07 am

Hey

» Posted By OppositionResearch On December 13, 2013 @ 8:50 am

Quiet correct. AH was, some time ago, a columnist at Townhall:

https://web.archive.org/web/19991009190120/http://www.townhall.com/columnists/bios/cbhuffington.html

I also remember when the far right Rev. Lou Sheldon of the Traditional Values Coalition eyed her as a possible protege.

I do know that it is possible for a person to change. I’m sure that this site consists of users who have changed their views dramatically.

But is this the case with AH? I doubt it. No true progressive or even decent Democrat would sell their soul to the devAOL, that end of the sewer line that spills toxic trolls into every HuffPo that appears on its main page.

At least she acknowledged one fact that we all know: there was no conspicuous platform for progressives anywhere in what could be called the mainstream media.

» Posted By OppositionResearch On December 13, 2013 @ 8:27 am

Same problem here.

» Posted By OppositionResearch On December 13, 2013 @ 8:13 am

And anyone wonders why law enforcement agencies strongly warn against revealing your identity in online forums.

I know from experience that disclosing real identities does nothing to deter trolls. They’re *PROUD* of their hate and are *GLAD* to put a name to it. Some of the worst commenters that I have ever seen were those who used their real names.

Where I live, deep within fertile opposition research land, the extremists and tax resisters blast out not only their real names, but phone numbers too.

Taking away anonymity only chills the voices who most need to be heard.

» Posted By OppositionResearch On December 12, 2013 @ 9:29 am

Fabulous, spot-on piece.

May the fact that I noticed the exact same phenomena (letting unregulated, incendiary trolls and hatetomatons run unchecked, censorship of hard-hitting fact-based critique of the far right) serve as independent corroboration for your piece. Great job.

The other oddity that I noticed at HuffNPuff is the remarkable fact that, for something that calls itself a “social site,” there is no way for users to send private messages to one another. PMs were a very common feature before newspapers (on cue, did you notice?) began shutting down their reader blogs.

Preventing us users from communicating privately with one another was a highly effective way to keep us weak, divided, and virtually unable to unite and collaborate.

HP’s world — the perfect microcosm of the “ideal” Corporate America world.

» Posted By OppositionResearch On December 11, 2013 @ 2:54 pm