Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 131

I wish I could quit you, Facebook

(Credit: Shutterstock)

There’s a relationship advice book called “Too Good to Leave, Too Bad to Stay.” I can’t believe it’s not about Facebook.

The social media behemoth has taken several well earned blows lately, most explosively regarding the reports this weekend of how analytics firm Cambridge Analytica mined information from as many as 50 million users. As The Guardian reported, the firm, hired in 2016 by the Trump campaign, then used that information “to build a system that could profile individual US voters, in order to target them with personalized political advertisements.”

Facebook suspended Cambridge Analytica on Friday, but the action was viewed by many as too little, too late — especially in light of its spotty track record on privacy and ongoing concerns over Russia-based advertisers stoking “divisive social and political messages” during the last presidential election.

In light of the most recent news, company shares were down on Monday. But Facebook already had been losing younger users over the past year (my own teens are about as into it as MySpace), shown an overall decline in users from the US and Canada, and has experienced a drop in how long people spend on the site. It’s not exactly suffering through any painful death throes yet though — there are still nearly two billion users around the world who rely on it for news and social connection.

Yet this past weekend was a ripe moment to re-up the classic “Time to Rethink Facebook” takes, a field already rich in tales of how getting off FB made the author feel less distracted and exploited. Writing in the Guardian Sunday, journalist Ellie Mae O’Hagan noted,”We have now reached the point where an unaccountable private corporation is holding detailed data on over a quarter of the world’s population.” And CNBC offered offered advice on how to protect your privacy on the social network, adding, “Or you can leave Facebook altogether.”

But a clean break isn’t an easy option for everybody. As New York Times writer Sheera Frenkel noted on Twitter Sunday, “If you want to delete Facebook, go ahead. Just know that’s a privilege. For much of the world, Facebook is the internet and only way to connect to family/friend/business. That’s why its important to have a real discussion re Facebook’s security/privacy issues.”

My own relationship with Facebook bears very little resemblance to what it was when I joined in 2007. Back then, I promiscuously accepted friend requests on the flimsiest of pretenses — which is how I wound up, idiotically, being “friends” with direct work supervisors, high school bullies and people I’d briefly dated. Back then, I habitually checked the app so I could update my status anywhere, any time. And though reactions were limited strictly to a simple thumbs up, it didn’t stop me from applying it everywhere.

Then, a few years ago, I slashed my friends list in half and I never looked back. My small group now is composed of people I genuinely consider my friends. I don’t have a professional public page. I’ve long since deleted the app, so I don’t even think about idly scrolling around when I’m killing time on the go — or enjoying my vacations. I take Lenten breaks, and I post and react less overall. I am deeply concerned about how our privacy is being abused and how false news stories have been disseminated. I have zero doubts that history will not judge Facebook kindly. The current news spin isn’t too generous either. Writing for CNBC Sunday, Matt Rosoff observed that ‘There’s a growing sense that Facebook has become creepy instead of fun . . . . Facebook is facing real problems. Instead of giving answers to those problems, top execs are selling, spinning and staying silent.”

Yet I can’t join the chorus boasting on Twitter (which is definitely totally pure and unproblematic, right?) about deleting my Facebook account. I can’t easily walk away from a platform that has been such a powerful tool for rallying community when it’s needed.

I have a friend who keeps a Facebook group to share updates — including the frustrating, scary ones — on her cancer treatment. She gets emotional support and can ask for specific advice and help — and she doesn’t have to do it one person at a time when her energy is already deeply in flux. Another friend planned her Facebook afterlife while she was in the late stage of her disease, asking me to manage her memorial page. The morning she passed, I was able to share the news, along with a request for a modest period of privacy for the family, without that difficult burden of telling the world going to her grieving relatives. An elderly pal uses it to keep in touch with her modest pool of contemporaries. A group of neighbors use it to keep tabs on local noise and crime — a few months ago we were able to compare notes on a person taking creepshots around our park. And when my family and I have faced our own multiple life and death crises, I’ve been sobbingly grateful to just be able to type a quick note saying that it’s all hit the fan and we need food and babysitting ASAP.

Other friends, admittedly mostly culled from my own white, Gen X demographic, have similarly tenuous relationships with the platform. “I don’t think anything would make me quit Facebook, though I do focus more on messenger these days than actual Facebook,” a coworker said Monday. “I’m part of a large network of writers on Facebook, people who are also my best friends, and that’s the primary way I keep up with them.”

There was a time I briefly thought of Facebook as my home. Now I see it more as a good room in a sketchy part of town. Sometimes, I still want to go there and observe the view. Sometimes, I want to share the space with someone I love. But I definitely don’t live there and I never will again. I can’t get back what’s already been taken from us, without our knowledge, but I can’t dismiss the platform’s unique usefulness either. So for now, I still just wonder about the devil’s bargain two billion of us have made. “I was fine with giving away my personal data for the purposes of selling me stuff,” a faraway friend told me Monday. “I’ve been sold stuff since the day I was born. Democracy, though, didn’t realize that was at stake.”

Evangelicals flock to Trump as he weathers Stormy Daniels scandal

(Credit: AP/Jorge Silva/Getty/marydan15/Salon)

As his presidency enters year two, Donald Trump’s political support ratings have slowly declined as increasing numbers of his supporters seem to be reevaluating their opinions of him. Trump began his administration with a 50 percent approval rating in aggregated polls, which has dipped to 39 percent as of this writing.

Almost anyway you slice it, Trump’s numbers are lower now than they were before, even among Republicans. There is one group that has maintained (and even increased) its support for the president, however: white evangelical Protestants.

In a January survey from the Pew Research Center, 72 percent of self-identified white evangelicals said they approved of the way that Trump doing his job, with 21 percent disapproving. In a March poll, 78 percent said they approved with just 18 percent saying they disapproved. White evangelicals were the only group in the two studies who became more supportive of Trump.

It’s notable that probably the biggest news that broke during the two months was the revelation that the president’s personal attorney, Michael Cohen, had paid $130,000 to porn actress and director Stormy Daniels shortly before the election.

Outside critics of the evangelical movement, and even some inside it, have observed that the relationship between evangelicals and Trump — a man who clearly has no familiarity with the Bible and has boasted about groping women — is simply about politics. He works on their agenda items and hires their people and they, in turn, support him loyally.

According to David Brody, the White House correspondent for Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network, that’s simply not the case.

“Critics say that the Trump-evangelical relationship is transactional, that they support him to see their agenda carried out. In fact, evangelicals take the long view on Mr. Trump; they afford him grace when he doesn’t deserve it,” Brody wrote in a February New York Times op-ed. “Few dispute that Mr. Trump may need a little more grace than others. But evangelicals truly do believe that all people are flawed, and yet Christ offers them grace. Shouldn’t they do the same for the president?”

That sentiment is one that’s been echoed by a number of fundamentalist Protestants, some of whom have begun comparing Trump to the Biblical stories about King Cyrus, a pagan ruler who was said to have been an instrument of God’s, despite the fact that he was not a Hebrew.

Other evangelicals, however, are much more willing to admit that they are, indeed, engaged in a political relationship. One such person is Tony Perkins, the head of the Family Research Council who originally supported Texas Sen. Ted Cruz for the 2016 GOP nomination, only to move toward Trump once his candidacy became inevitable.

“Folks, you have no reason to be ashamed of supporting this president. He has kept his promises, and as long as he continues to keep those promises and he continues to conduct himself in a way that is in keeping with the office—you know, if he were to engage in behavior like Bill Clinton, we’re out of here. That support would evaporate quickly,” Perkins told the audience of his daily radio show last Monday, in remarks transcribed by Right Wing Watch.

Still other evangelical leaders seem to view their support for Trump as a matter of identity. Conservative media has become so suffused with criticisms of “liberal elites” who allegedly persecute Christians that many seem to believe Trump is their battering ram against the left. In a March 2017 poll done by the Public Religion Research Institute, more evangelicals said they were discriminated against by society than Muslims were.

Rick Wiles, the host of a web show called “TruNews” told viewers last week that “America smells like putrid vomit in the nostrils of the Lord” because of its willingness to tolerate LGBT rights, in contrast to Russia, which does not.

“You had better be careful about saying, ‘Oh, we’re going to have a war, we’re going to beat Russia,’” he warned hypothetical left-wing viewers of his show. “You better be very careful, because the Lord may be on Russia’s side in this war.”

“They’re acting more Christian than us,” he said. “This nation has embraced homosexuality, lewdness, pornography, every vile thing, paganism, the gods of the East, we’ve embraced it in this country and the church just accommodates it.”

Undercover investigation claims Cambridge Analytica engages in illegal tactics

Cambridge Analytica's chief executive officer Alexander Nix (Credit: Getty/Patricia De Melo)

Cambridge Analytica, the data firm closely linked to Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, reportedly secretly campaigns in many global elections and uses illegal tactics like bribes and sex workers to compromise politicians, ITN Channel 4 News revealed in an undercover investigation.

The British news outlet, overseas partners of NBC, filmed the company’s senior executives during meetings over four months and gathered some horrifying information, particularly from its chief executive Alexander Nix. “In one exchange, when asked about digging up material on political opponents, Mr Nix said they could ‘send some girls around to the candidate’s house’, adding that Ukrainian girls ‘are very beautiful, I find that works very well,'” Channel 4 News reported. “In another he said: ‘We’ll offer a large amount of money to the candidate, to finance his campaign in exchange for land for instance, we’ll have the whole thing recorded, we’ll blank out the face of our guy and we post it on the Internet.'”

Offering bribes to public officials is illegal in both the United Kingdom and the United States, where Cambridge Analytica operates and is registered, respectively. Channel 4 filmed the company’s executives during meetings at hotels in London between Nov. 2017 and Jan. 2018 by sending in a reporter to pose “as a fixer for a wealthy client hoping to get candidates elected in Sri Lanka,” the outlet said. Apparently, the executives bragged about their involvement in over 200 global elections, from Nigeria to Argentina.

The firm faced another scandal this weekend when reports surfaced that said Cambridge Analytica harvested data from over 50 million Facebook users so that it could more effectively manipulate voters’ behavior in the 2016 presidential election.

A Cambridge Analytica spokesperson responded to Channel 4’s investigation with the following statement: “We entirely refute any allegation that Cambridge Analytica or any of its affiliates use entrapment, bribes, or so-called ‘honey-traps’ for any purpose whatsoever. . .We routinely undertake conversations with prospective clients to try to tease out any unethical or illegal intentions.”

Channel 4 News’ investigation is ongoing, but you can watch their report at the YouTube link below.

 

Facebook stock tanks as data harvesting scandal opens up possibility of lawsuits

Mark Zuckerberg (Credit: Getty/Drew Angerer)

Facebook’s stock hit a six-month low Monday as investors panicked over reports that the social media giant’s highly detailed information on its users had been given to a consumer data company that was closely linked to the 2016 presidential campaign of Donald Trump.

Public shares for Facebook sharply declined as much as 8.1 percent in heavy trading to $170 per share as investors panicked over news that a Cambridge University psychology professor named Aleksandr Kogan had transferred data on over 50 million users that he had obtained for academic purposes to Cambridge Analytica, a British tech firm.

In a Friday post, Facebook general counsel Paul Grewal wrote that Kogan had “lied” to the company about what he had done with the user information that he had collected via an app he developed for use within Facebook that was called “thisisyourdigitallife.” Under Facebook’s terms of use, academics may collect much more detailed data about users and may not transfer the information they glean to commercial or political entities. According to Grewal, the social network became aware that Kogan had transferred highly granular data he had collected on 270,000 users in 2015.

The Facebook attorney did not mention that Kogan’s data also included information on tens of millions of users who were linked as “friends” of these users and that it had taken no steps to verify that Cambridge Analytica and another firm, Eunoia Technologies, had erased the improperly obtained data. Grewal stated that Facebook recently learned that both firms had not done so and that they would be suspended from using its services.

Facebook had already been facing increasing pressure from regulators in Europe and the United States for lax policies regarding political advertising and the ease with which purveyors of fabricated or grossly exaggerated news stories can utilize the platform. Some elected officials have been questioning whether the company can understand the amount of data that it collects in order to properly manage it. According to Facebook, its platform has over 2 billion monthly users and millions of advertisers looking to monetize them.

“I think you do enormous good. But your power sometimes scares me,” Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., admonished a Facebook attorney last October. “You don’t have the ability to know who every one of those advertisers is, do you? Today, right now. Not your commitment, I’m asking about your ability.”

The unauthorized transfer and Facebook’s failure to follow-up may open it up to a bevy of consumer data privacy lawsuits in Europe, which has much stronger regulations on what academic and commercial entities may do with information they collect.

On Friday, David Carroll, an associate professor at the New York-based Parsons School of Design, filed a lawsuit in London against Cambridge Analytica for allegedly violating the United Kingdom’s privacy rules.

“I am concerned that I may have been targeted with messages that criticized Secretary Hillary Clinton with falsified or exaggerated information that negatively affected my sentiment about her candidacy and consequently discouraged me from engaging with the Clinton campaign as a formal or informal volunteer,” Carroll wrote in his plaintiff brief.

The professor filed his suit after he said that Cambridge had failed to give him the source of the information that it had aggregated about him, a violation of United Kingdom data usage laws which require that companies disclose such information when requested by consumers.

No such litigation in the United States has been filed against Facebook as of yet but on Saturday, Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey announced that she had opened an investigation into both Cambridge Analytica and the internet behemoth for their relationship.

Facebook is also being sued in a federal district court in San Francisco in a class action matter which alleges that the company had violated an Illinois law which prohibits the unauthorized use of photographs of a person without their permission. The company is being sued for employing software which stores information on Americans for use in labeling posted images in which they appear. Such software is highly restricted in Canada and the European Union but is mostly unregulated in the United States.

Trump calls for the death penalty for drug dealers

Donald Trump speaks about his plan to combat opioid drug addiction at Manchester Community College, March 19, 2018. (Credit: AP/Elise Amendola)

Inspired by authoritarian leaders across the globe, President Donald Trump sternly, yet ominously, touted his plan to get tough on drugs as he vowed to seek the death penalty for some narcotics pushers.

“I love tough guys, we need tough guys,” Trump proudly declared on Monday in Manchester, New Hampshire, a state that has been hit hard by the American opioid epidemic. “If we don’t get tough on the drug dealers, we are wasting our time.”

He continued, “And that toughness includes the death penalty.”

Trump’s infatuation with the drastic proposal has been reported for a number of weeks, and it has been inspired, at least in part, by the zero-tolerance policy championed by the authoritarian leaders he has praised in China, the Philippines and Singapore.

The president has praised Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte, who has enacted a brutal drug crackdown since taking office, which has left more than 12,000 dead in extrajudicial killings. “They don’t play games,” Trump said of other nations’ drug policies.

Trump went on to state that drug dealers “will kill thousands of people during their lifetime,” although they will not receive harsh enough punishment. “This is about winning a very, very tough problem. And if we don’t get very tough on these dealers, it is not going to happen, folks,” he said.

Trump claims that drug dealers "will kill thousands of people" in their lifetime. Experts have told me that this number is ridiculous.

He then says that such people get 30 days in jail or a fine when caught. This is also ridiculous.

— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) March 19, 2018

“The only way to solve the drug problem is through toughness,” Trump continued.

Along with the death penalty, the president also blasted sanctuary cities and declared that getting rid of them was “crucial to stopping the drug addiction crisis.”

He took shots at Democrats as well, and confidently proclaimed his infamous proposal to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border as if it would be a be-all, end-all solution.

“Eventually the Democrats will agree with us to build the wall and to keep the damn drugs out,” Trump stated.

He also seemed to take aim at drug manufacturers, saying the Department of Justice would take action against them. But Trump’s rhetoric on big pharmaceutical companies, which many have attributed to being a primary driver of the opioid crisis, has often fallen flat. The pharmaceutical industry cashed in on Trump’s tax plan, and he has done little to request proper treatment funding that health experts have said was vital to easing the epidemic.

Trump says he wants a federal lawsuit against pharma companies that make opioids. He also says they have to combat the problem of over-prescribing, plans to cut nationwide opioid prescriptions by one third.

— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) March 19, 2018

Trump's opioids speech has morphed into an immigration speech. He is now talking again about how MS-13 members prefer to use knives to guns to inflict maximum pain.

— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) March 19, 2018

Monday’s speech is the latest in the Trump administration’s avowed drug war redux, which has tethered drug crime and immigration policy into one.

 

 

Cynthia Nixon is running for governor of New York

Cynthia Nixon; Andrew Cuomo (Credit: Getty/Jenny Anderson/Hans Pennink)

“Sex and the City” star Cynthia Nixon officially declared her candidacy for governor of New York on Monday. The announcement ended months of speculation as to whether the actress would mount a challenge to incumbent Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the state’s Democratic primary this September.

Nixon’s candidacy has historic implications. If she were to win, the actress would become New York’s first women and first openly bi-sexual governor. Her run also impacts the political future of Cuomo, who is seeking a third term in office but is also openly rumored to have his eyes on the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.

Nixon partnered her official announcement with a campaign video shared on Twitter. “New York is where I was raised and where I am raising my kids,” the mom of three says. “I’m a proud public school graduate and a prouder public school parent. I was given chances I just don’t see for most of New York’s kids today.”

I love New York, and today I'm announcing my candidacy for governor. Join us: https://t.co/9DwsxWW8xX pic.twitter.com/kYTvx6GZiD

— Cynthia Nixon (@CynthiaNixon) March 19, 2018

Indeed, Nixon is a longtime education activist with a record of speaking out about the vast inefficiencies and inequalities of New York’s public school system. “Between our 100 richest schools and our 100 poorest schools, there’s a $10,000 gap on what we spend per pupil,” Nixon said on the Today show in August. “The gap between our richest schools and our poorest schools is wider under Gov. Cuomo than it has ever been before, and that’s got to stop.”

While she did not name Cuomo by name, Nixon did address New York’s rising income gap head on, casting blame on the state’s politicians. “Our leaders are letting us down. We are now the most unequal state in the entire country, with both incredible wealth and extreme poverty,” she said. “How did we let this happen?”

“Something has to change,” Nixon continued. “We want our government to work again — on health care, ending mass incarceration, fixing our broken subway. We are sick of politicians who care more about headlines and power than they do about us.”

This message provides early clues as to what issues Nixon plans to center her campaign on. While health care and mass incarceration are key progressive issues across the country, Cuomo has come under fire throughout the past year over New York City’s failing subway system, and for many New Yorkers, transportation is a daily struggle.

On Twitter, there were many positive reactions to Nixon’s candidacy. Rosie O’Donnell declared her support, proclaiming Nixon to be “a true leader.”

CYNTHIA NIXON FOR GOVERNOR OF NEW YORK ! #myFULLsupport – she is one of kind – brilliant – brave bold and so smart – a true leader #NIXON4NY pic.twitter.com/5hSeCDzzer

— ROSIE (@Rosie) March 19, 2018

While Cuomo remains fairly popular, one journalist dubbed Nixon a “high-profile primary challenger.”

Breaking: New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo officially has a high-profile primary challenger: Former Sex and the City star Cynthia Nixon https://t.co/bHVdxAEWAz

— Brian M. Rosenthal (@brianmrosenthal) March 19, 2018

And many people addressed the double-standard of actors and men in entertainment easily transitioning into politics, while women in the same industries are more likely be called out for their inexperience.

One thing I'm curious about with Cynthia Nixon's candidacy– lots of men have jumped from showbiz to politics (Reagan, Schwarzenegger, Franken, Trump.) Will voters allow a woman to to the same?

— Charlotte Alter (@CharlotteAlter) March 19, 2018

The people who claimed Trump is qualified to be president will be the same people who declare Cynthia Nixon unfit to run for office since she’s an actor

— Roland Scahill (@rolandscahill) March 19, 2018

Cynthia Nixon is like Arnold Schwarzenegger except with a degree from Barnard and without a secret love child so check the sexism at the door.

— Kaivan Shroff (@KaivanShroff) March 19, 2018

In a time where actors and entertainers en masse are making the leap into politics, Nixon still needs to clarify her positions on key issues if she wants to be taken seriously as a politician. But, as far as progressive values and political engagement go, her record outpaces many of her showbiz counterparts. As others have pointed out, Nixon might just have a name and platform large enough to wield victory this fall.

Jim Carrey under fire over “monstrous” portrait of Sarah Huckabee Sanders

Jim Carrey (Credit: Getty/Christopher Polk)

Actor and comedian Jim Carrey is under fire for tweeting an original painting that appears to depict White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders in an unflattering light.

Certainly, the caption of Carrey’s tweet provides sufficient reason to believe that his portrait portrays Sanders, as it reads: “This is the portrait of a so-called Christian whose only purpose in life is to lie for the wicked. Monstrous!”

This is the portrait of a so-called Christian whose only purpose in life is to lie for the wicked. Monstrous! pic.twitter.com/MeYLTy1pqb

— Jim Carrey (@JimCarrey) March 17, 2018

One person who took to Twitter to slam Carrey’s painting was Sanders’ father, former Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee.

Pathetic BULLY, sexist, hater, bigot & "Christaphobe" @jimcarrey attacks @PressSec for her faith; what would be hypocritical Hollywood reaction if he called someone a "so-called Muslim" or "so-called Jew?" #classlessCarrey https://t.co/HCqHoER0Ru

— Gov. Mike Huckabee (@GovMikeHuckabee) March 19, 2018

Other conservatives shared the former Arkansas governor’s sentiments.

Hey @JimCarrey – @PressSec is not a "so-called" Christian. She IS a Christian. And there's nothing more beautiful than a follower of our Lord. https://t.co/Hav2Mc8KIH

— toddstarnes (@toddstarnes) March 19, 2018

Are you the Jim Carrey who was a comedian back in the '90s?

— Mark Dice (@MarkDice) March 18, 2018

In the last week Jim Carrey and Hillary Clinton have both attacked women.

Hate and intolerance has taken over the left.

I’m so disgusted daily by the constant hypocrisy. Call these people out!

Supreme court #SCOTUS Air Force One Executive Order

— Woman4Truth (@Sob916) March 19, 2018

Jim Carrey is the poster boy for the modern liberal man.
Failed, broken, and mentally unstable.
His movie career has disintegrated! Carrey now spends his days insulting conservative women like .@PressSec
Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
Mental illness is a common trait among leftists!

— Jake Highwell (@JakeHighwell) March 19, 2018

Others voiced appreciation for the painting and questioned why some individuals were more offended by satirical artwork than actual mistruths being uttered by a federal employee who the American people are supposed to be able to trust.

Remember when Jim Carrey got all that credit for calling a Fashion Week red carpet "meaningless" and then he released an entire documentary about how we didn't appreciate his performance as Andy Kaufman enough?

— Louis Virtel (@louisvirtel) March 19, 2018

Jim Carrey under fire from Trump loyalists who really don't like it when famous people say rude things about others.

— John Fugelsang (@JohnFugelsang) March 19, 2018

Trump: I moved on her like a bitch. But I couldn’t get there…when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.

Fox News; Locker room talk!@JimCarrey: I made a painting.

Fox News: ACTOR JIM CARREY GOES TOO FAR!

— Richard Jeter (@MilesToGo13) March 19, 2018

“Jim Carrey went too far by painting Sarah Sanders” said Fox News who played Dude Looks Like A Lady when reporting on Chelsea Manning, blamed hoodies for the death of Trayvon Martin, and called Barack and Michelle Obama fist bumping a “terrorist fist jab.”

— OhNoSheTwitnt (@OhNoSheTwitnt) March 19, 2018

Conservatives are more mad at an actor who played the Grinch than our President who behaves like the Grinch. You can’t excuse inexcusable conduct by Donald Trump for 3 years then expect us to take your outrage over a painting by Jim Carrey seriously.

— Adam Best (@adamcbest) March 19, 2018

Carrey himself seized upon the controversy to promote another one of his paintings satirizing the Trump administration titled, “The Wicked Witch of the West Wing and Putin’s Flying Monkeys.” Previous artwork by the Carrey has taken swipes at Trump himself, as well as his former chief strategist Steve Bannon, former Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and numerous other Republicans in Congress.

The actor said he finds it “cathartic” to paint Trump in an interview with W Magazine. Carrey also argued that, “It’s not a battle I want to fight, but you’ve got to play a part. Every day at some point there’s pretty much a peaceful acceptance of what’s going on in my life right now, but I do also tune in to the Republican—what could I call on it?—war on logic, intelligence and compassion at least once a day.”

Carrey has demonstrated consistently left-wing views on issues like gun control, with his position on that issue prompting him to denounce himself from his own movie “Kick-Ass 2″ following the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. He has also promoted the anti-vaxxer movement, beliefs which have also courted controversy.

If you liked my last cartoon you may also enjoy…

"THE WICKED WITCH OF THE WEST WING AND PUTIN’S FLYING MONKEYS“ pic.twitter.com/slBG7j1s8d

— Jim Carrey (@JimCarrey) March 19, 2018

Trump’s White House has no strategy for North Korea summit

(Credit: Getty/BackyardProduction)

The Trump Administration is scrambling to prepare for a historic summit between the United States and North Korea, happening in just over two months.

Yet the specifics are still vague, including basic questions as to where the summit will be held, what will be discussed, what the U.S. is looking to gain and what it’s looking to potentially give up, according to The Washington Post.

The recent firing of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has complicated things further, as the departing CIA Director Mike Pompeo is pending confirmation by the Senate. Gen. H.R. McMaster is also on the outskirts of the Trump administration, and his potential replacement, John Bolton, has often fantasized about war with North Korea. Bolton recently penned a Wall Street Journal op-ed in which he argued for taking out the Kim Jong-un regime with a preemptive military strike.

Pompeo is also a hawkish ideologue and recently said the U.S. would make no concessions to the North Korean regime. Pompeo and the president have developed a relationship that is very much synchronized. So, while Trump’s willingness to meet with North Korea could be seen by some as a sign of crisis aversion, his other recent administrative moves have suggested he’s positioning for a more aggressive foreign policy in year two of his presidency.

In his acceptance of the first potential meeting between a sitting U.S. president and a member of the Kim dynasty, Trump has also placed himself on a pedestal and berated the foreign policy decisions of his presidential predecessors.

“Nobody would have done what I did,” Trump said, according to the Post. “Maybe we should send in the people that have been playing games and didn’t know what the hell they’ve been doing for 25 years.”

Other high-profile summits in the past have taken months or even years to prepare for, “with lower-level diplomats working out the agenda and the likely outcomes,” the Post noted. The opposite rings true, however, for Trump’s potential face-to-face meeting with Kim.

Some foreign policy experts have warned of the gravity of such a summit, and the preparation and focus that must go into it.

“A normal administration wouldn’t do this,” Michael J. Green, the senior Asia director at the National Security Council for the Bush administration told the Post. “The North Koreans have wanted an American president to meet the Kim family since the end of the Cold War to demonstrate to the world their nuclear program got the American president to treat them as an equal. No normal NSC or White House could see how this could be done without damaging the credibility of the president and our alliances.”

Kim has yet to confirm the meeting between the two, since the president accepted earlier this month.

Typical for the administration, the White House has been bogged down by scandals that include staff shake-ups and a disputed nondisclosure agreement with a former adult film star. Trump can hardly focus on one topic for very long, but much of his mental faculties have been devoted to dodging and undermining anything that pertains to the ongoing special counsel investigation into his administration.

It’s also worth noting that preparation — of any sort — with the president has been an increasingly difficult task. He doesn’t read lengthy reports and briefings, and he has gone off-script on numerous occasions in past events.

Hillary Clinton says she “meant no disrespect” with her comments about Trump voters

Hillary Clinton (Credit: AP/Matt Rourke)

Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee in 2016, is attempting to clarify controversial remarks she made last week that claimed Donald Trump voters were “looking backwards.”

In a Facebook post on Saturday, the former Secretary of State explained that she was trying to “defend Americans and explain how Donald Trump could have been elected.” She argued, “Trump’s message was dark and backwards looking” and added that his slogan of “Make America Great Again!” implied, “To be great we have to go back to something we are no longer. I never accepted that and never will.”

After describing why she also argued that “women are unfortunately more swayed by men than the other way around,” Clinton then turned to the controversy that erupted around her interview comments.

“I understand how some of what I said upset people and can be misinterpreted. I meant no disrespect to any individual or group. And I want to look to the future as much as anybody,” Clinton wrote.

She added, “But our future requires us to learn from 2016. We need to protect our election systems from intrusion by Russia or anyone else. We need to combat voter suppression and the propagation of fake and misleading news. I fear we are not doing anywhere near enough on those fronts, and I know we can do better.”

During the event at the India Today Conclave in Mumbai last week, Clinton had used the electoral college map to explain why Trump wound up prevailing in the 2016 presidential election.

“If you look at the map of the United States, there’s all that red in the middle where Trump won. I win the coast, I win, you know, Illinois and Minnesota, places like that,” Clinton told the audience.

“But what the map doesn’t show you is that I won the places that represent two-thirds of America’s gross domestic product. So I won the places that are optimistic, diverse, dynamic, moving forward. And his whole campaign, ‘Make America Great Again,’ was looking backwards.”

“My brain made me do it” is becoming a more common criminal defense

(Credit: Shutterstock/sirtravelalot)

After Richard Hodges pleaded guilty to cocaine possession and residential burglary, he appeared somewhat dazed and kept asking questions that had nothing to do with the plea process. That’s when the judge ordered that Hodges undergo a neuropsychological examination and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) testing. Yet no irregularities turned up.

Hodges, experts concluded, was faking it. His guilty plea would stand.

But experts looking back at the 2007 case now say Hodges was part of a burgeoning trend: Criminal defense strategies are increasingly relying on neurological evidence—psychological evaluations, behavioral tests or brain scans—to potentially mitigate punishment. Defendants may cite earlier head traumas or brain disorders as underlying reasons for their behavior, hoping this will be factored into a court’s decisions. Such defenses have been employed for decades, mostly in death penalty cases. But as science has evolved in recent years, the practice has become more common in criminal cases ranging from drug offenses to robberies.

“The number of cases in which people try to introduce neurotechnological evidence in the trial or sentencing phase has gone up by leaps and bounds,” says Joshua Sanes, director of the Center for Brain Science at Harvard University. But such attempts may be outpacing the scientific evidence behind the technology, he adds.

“In 2012 alone over 250 judicial opinions — more than double the number in 2007 — cited defendants arguing in some form or another that their ‘brains made them do it,’” according to an analysis by Nita Farahany, a law professor and director of Duke University’s Initiative for Science and Society. More recently, she says, that number has climbed to around 420 each year.

Even when lawyers do not bring neuroscience into the courtroom, this shift can still affect a case: Some defendants are now using the omission of neuroscience as grounds for questioning the competency of the defenses they received. In a bid to untangle the issue, Sanes, Farahany and other members of a committee of The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine are meeting in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday to discuss what they have dubbed “neuroforensics.”

“The meeting is largely future-oriented, and focused not so much on law enforcement use, but on admissibility in court,” Steven Hyman, co-chair of the committee and director of the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research at the Broad Institute, wrote in an e-mail to Scientific American. The gathering will likely dive into a variety of questions about how neuroscience and genetics should be used in the courtroom — including how brain scans indicating the presence of pain should be used in assessing disability benefits, and when someone’s biology can explain behavior. Another controversial discussion point will be recent proof-of-concept work on how pictures of what’s happening in the brain — functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) or an EEG test (which captures electrical brain activity) — could be coupled with computer algorithms to eventually reconstruct what a person saw or to capture other aspects of human perception.

The committee will also be talking about the role of genetics in the courtroom — a trend that may be declining, even as neuroscience takes a more prominent role in criminal cases. In 2013 there were 18 cases in which judicial opinions mentioned genetics; in 2014 there were only 10 and in 2015 the number dropped to seven, according to an unpublished review by Farahany. “There may have been more attempts than this that simply aren’t discussed [in judicial decisions], but if they have relevance to the outcome in the case, then they would have been discussed,” she says. Farahany believes the drop is due to the fact that science linking certain genetic mutations with criminal tendencies has simply not panned out, even as scientists continue to uncover more detail about how our brains influence our behavior.

Currently, most neuroscience enters the courtroom in the form of psychological evaluations or behavioral studies. Actual snapshots of the brain from MRIs or CT scans are only showing up in about 15 percent of judicial opinions that involve neuroscience, according to Farahany’s research. But ahead of their meeting, committee members cautioned the role of brain scans could surge in the very near future — a good reason to start discussing these issues now.

“This is such a fraught area, and it’s prone to hype and overstatement,” Sanes says of neuroforensics. But at the meeting, “hopefully we’ll both get some feedback about good avenues to explore, and get some suggestions about how to mount a full study, he says. “This meeting is the starting point.”