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Martha McSally: The Bolton PAC, Mercer family, and Cambridge Analytica connection

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Back in May of 2014 I posted in Questions for Martha McSally: Are you a Neocon war monger like your endorser John Bolton?

Martha McSally’s views on foreign policy and national defense just moved up to the top of my list of topics that I want to depose her ask her campaign questions about with this announcement on Thursday (the local media should do the same). Bolton PAC Makes First Endorsement:

Former United Nations ambassador John Bolton’s political-action committee will make its first endorsement on Thursday, backing former Air Force colonel Martha McSally in her race against Arizona Democratic representative Ron Barber.

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The John Bolton Super PAC (he also has a regular political action committee) will support candidates who share his vision for a muscular American foreign policy and the need to revive America’s role in the world.

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McSally will receive a total of $10,000 from Bolton’s organization . . . “I am honored to have the support and endorsement of Ambassador Bolton, a great American who has advocated for our freedom against enemies worldwide,” McSally said in a statement.

Oh Hell No! On a Batshit Crazy scale of 1 to 10, John Bolton breaks the scale blowing past 11. Martha McSally is the first endorsement for Bolton’s Super PAC? And she calls this reckless war monger “a great American”?

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The social media leg of the Special Counsel’s Russia investigation comes into focus (Updated)

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Cambridge Analytica is a company created by Robert Mercer, a billionaire patron of right-wing outlets like Breitbart News. Mercer’s daughter, Rebekah, is a board member. Donald Trump’s campaign manager, Steve Bannon, is a former vice president of Cambridge Analytica, and the former editor of Breitbart News. Trump confidant Gen. Michael Flynn also had “a brief advisory role” with Cambridge Analytica. Cambridge Analytica, the shady data firm that might be a key Trump-Russia link, explained:

Cambridge Analytica specializes in what’s called “psychographic” profiling, meaning they use data collected online to create personality profiles for voters. They then take that information and target individuals with specifically tailored content.

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In June 2016, the Trump campaign hired Cambridge Analytica to take over its data operations.

We know from the reporting of Nicholas Confessore and Danny Hakim at the New York Times that Jared Kushner, who was charged with overseeing Trump’s digital operations, is the reason Cambridge Analytica joined the Trump campaign.

Kushner hired a man named Brad Parscale, a Texas-based digital expert who had worked previously for team Trump. According to Confessore and Hakim, Cambridge Analytica convinced Parscale (who has since agreed to be interviewed by the House Intelligence Committee) to “try out the firm.” The decision was reinforced by Trump’s campaign manager, Steve Bannon, a former vice president of Cambridge Analytica.

It’s not clear to what extent Cambridge Analytica helped (Parscale denied that Cambridge was of any use in a recent 60 Minutes interview), but we do know that Trump’s digital operation was shockingly effective. Samuel Woolley, who heads the Computational Propaganda project at Oxford’s Internet Institute, found that a disproportionate amount of pro-Trump messaging was spread via automated bots and anti-Hillary propaganda. Trump’s bots, they reported at the time of the election, outnumbered Clinton’s five to one.

Pro-Trump programmers “carefully adjusted the timing of content production during the debates, strategically colonized pro-Clinton hashtags, and then disabled activities after Election Day.”

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“Waiting for Warren!” Until she didn’t do what they wanted.

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I’ve been skeptical of the claim by many Sanders supporters that they are not down on Hillary Clinton at all because she’s a woman, oh no, it’s because she’s a terrible woman, for a while now. Clinton detractors on the left have insisted that they do want a woman to be President! But it has to be the right woman! And they have such a woman in mind: Elizabeth Warren! They’re #WaitingForWarren

I agree that Massachusetts Senator Warren is wonderful. And here she is being her terrific self on her Facebook page on February 22nd:

original warren fb post

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Some people cling to the belief that Eric Garner was killed by everything but the cops who killed him

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Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

Steve King

Rep. Steve King (R-NY) told CNN that Eric Garner’s death was caused by his obesity and not by the choke hold administered by five Staten Island cops.

“You had a 350-pound person who was resisting arrest. The police were trying to bring him down as quickly as possible,” King said in an appearance on CNN’s “The Situation Room.” “If he had not had asthma and a heart condition and was so obese, almost definitely he would not have died from this. The police had no reason to know he was in serious condition.”

The confrontation between Pantaleo and Garner was also caught on video that showed Garner repeatedly telling the officer he couldn’t breathe. King said police hear that kind of thing all the time.

“But if you can’t breathe, you can’t talk,” he argued.

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Futurist Watts Wacker on Corporate Goodness & Storytelling

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Skyscrapers.20-sig-sm72by Pamela Powers Hannley

Has social media pushed us beyond the information age and into the age of goodness?

With the blurring of the lines between news and entertainment and the blurring of the definition of a "friend", futurist Watts Wacker told attendees of the Public Relations Society of America Western District Conference that we are creating a macro culture that will "replace the information age".

Wacker's presentation was a string of observations about "cultural transformation" in our evolving world.

In the global village that is social media, people and corporations can no longer differentiate themselves by what they do-– for example, sell cars, bake bread, play music– because so many others are performing those same services, and thanks to social media, we all know about them. In the information age, we relied on corporate media and advertising to tell us where to buy a car, what bread is best, and who is the greatest rock band ever. Now we get information from our "friends". According to Wacker, corporations, celebrities, and just plain folks have to differentiate themselves by who they are… as people (since corporations are people, my friend.)