According to the teen heart-throb TV shows, vampires are supposed to die once they suffer the appropriate, ritualistic execution. Why not the wing-nuts?
I had the misfortune to read an article in Fortune today, "1.6 Billion Rounds Of Ammo...". Formerly, I viewed that pub as the last, remaining "honest broker" of financial news since the WSJ sank into the Murdoch swamp. Boy was I mistaken. So, I started to check the back story.
The Faux news story began as an unsigned, chain email in Mar of 2012. That same month, Politifact published a cogent explanation of the issue.
http://www.politifact.com/...
Unfazed by that alternative view (dare I say "facts"?), CNN followed a coven of conspiracy bloggers and recycled the story in Sept. 2012. CNN cited, no kidding, Alex Jones as one source for the information. Alex, the Clown Prince of Prison Planet, recognized as a race baiter by the SPLC. No mention was made of any points made by Politifact. At any rate, after reading the horrifyingly deceitful, manipulative article...I moved on to the 2,521 comments. Yeah, over two thousand! There, I was pleasantly surprised by the sharply-worded comments critical of the authors obvious dishonesty, the clumsy presentation of pseudo-facts and bogus conclusions and overall downward arc of the networks ethical trajectory to it's current nadir. Most of the commenters did their own "due diligence" and found the facts. Great, we (the people) didn't buy the BS.
Last month the issue bubbled up again in the Denver Post with a whopping 3 para article, once again, citing Alex Jones.
It illustrated the seriousness of the issue by stating, "The Homeland Security Department wants to buy more than 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition in the next four or five years. It says it needs them — about the equivalent of five cartridges for every person in the United States."
Further, "That's when conservative radio host Alex Jones spoke of an "arms race against the American people" and said the government was "gearing up for total collapse, they're gearing up for huge wars."
Several hundred comments were written by Denverites which seemed to indicate they were more persuaded by the faux story. Sad face.
Which brings us to today. Well, yesterday actually when Forbes wrote their article on the same, bogus story.
http://www.forbes.com/...
Fortune doubled down on the original, bogus story by also alleging the DHS was also deploying armored vehicles and automatic weapons against the population (both assertions wrong) and then quoted the infamous John Lott (who wrote the discredited, More Guns, Less Violence). It was a logically unconnected tidbit regarding President Obama's presumed disdain of gun ownership.
"Unlike other liberal academics who usually enjoyed discussing opposing ideas, Obama showed disdain.” WTF??
My comments are on page 3 of the comments under lenomdeplume.
Yeah, the vampire analogy. If I read the article's side bar correctly, 599 people recommended the article via Goggle and 4,000 Twitter characters were logged. I estimate there are approx 600 people commented directly on the article. Bad news? The vast majority were of the Wing-Nut persuasion. Jaw-dropping, low sloping forehead stuff. I was blown away; not only that a formerly credible news source was now just another "content aggregator", but also abashed at the enormity of the task to debunk the WingNuts. I mean, for fuck's sake!
My sense of humor likes the Augean Stables analogy because of the obvious relationship to the execrable propaganda created by a multitude of cattle. But, there is no simple solution to this. No river to divert and flush out the muck. Its more like the killing the hydra whose heads grew back after each decapitation (figuratively speaking). Eventually, a solution was found to prevent the re-animation of the severed heads and the one, immortal head was destroyed by a "special weapon". These days, no such luck. This appears to be a grind-it-out fight, re-contested at each new confrontation.
Unless someone knows where the silver stake is kept?
