Scary Message From Obama Is Truly Scary, Even If It's Fake News

Jordan Peele literally put words in Barack Obama's mouth using
technology that would make today's fake news seem like kid's play

A PSA recently came out that features former President Barack Obama, but it's almost immediately apparent that something is off when you start watching it.

His voice sounds a little weird. Like he's been drinking (Obama has absolutely no reputation as a drinker.)

The things he says are even more off kilter.

Here's part of the script:

"We're entering an era in which our enemies can make it look like anyone is saying anything at any point in time - even if they would never say those things......So, for instance, they could have me say things like, I don't know, (Black Panther's) Kilmonger was right! Or Ben Carson is in the sunken place! Or how 'bout this, Simply, President Trump is a total and complete dipshit."

We all know Obama would never say things like publicly. But in the video, his lips are moving perfectly with the words being spoken. How could this be.

It turns out "Obama" is being voiced by filmmaker and actor Jordan Peele. (One of Peele's schticks is impersonations of Obama.)

As BuzzFeed reports, the PSA was a project developed by Peele and BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti, who is Peele's brother in law.

The screen in the video splits, to show Peele delivering the PSA and Obama appearing to do it. It's amazing the technology makes it look like Obama is actually speaking. And scary, for sure.

The script continues: "This is a dangerous time. Moving forward, we need to be more vigilant with what we trust from the internet."

Buzzfeed describes this technology and ugly world future this way:

"A slew of slick, easy-to-use and eventually seamless technological tools for manipulating perception and falsifying reality, for which terms have already been coined - 'reality apathy,' 'automated laser phishing' and 'human puppets."

Buzzfeed goes on: "Such tools could be used to create pornographic videos with celebrities' faces superimposed or have world leaders appear to make outrageous and potentially dangerous statements. "
I have to admit: Donald Trump has a point. There's a lot of fake news out there. It's just that most of what he calls fake is true, and some of what he calls true is fake.

That's the crux of the problem: Who do we believe? And what do we do about people who absolutely believe things that aren't true, because fake news can be so convincing?

The point Peele is illustrating just points to how much worse things are going to get with technology. How are we going to trust what we see and hear? Even legitimate news sites will have trouble discerning what is real and what is fake.

Plus, let's face it. Most people believe things that fit their already set viewpoint. And many are willing to go over the top with their beliefs.

There's still a lot of people out there convinced that "Pizzagate" is real, that Hillary Clinton is running a child sex ring out of the basement of a Washington DC pizzaria, never mind that said pizza place doesn't even have a basement.

There's an amazing number of people out there who think the Earth is flat, that jet contrails are really "chemtrails" raining chemicals down on us to control our minds, that surviving students of the February mass shooting in Florida are just "crisis actors" trying to take all our rights away.

When this becomes widespread, when videos will literally put words in other peoples' mouths, this conspiracy theory, fake news believing group will become bigger and bigger.

And real world problems won't get solved because everyone will be chasing fake world problems.

Technology can be a force of good. But more and more often, it's being weaponized. Mostly for psych ops. That's not the future I want.

"Black Panther" Opens To Boffo Reviews And Big Crowds, But Racists VERY Unhappy

It seems like everybody loves the new film "Black Panther,"
that is except a small group of pathetic little white supremacists.

The superhero movie "Black Panther"  is setting box office records for an opening week.  Critics LOVE the movie. I haven't seen it yet, but I will. It sounds terrific.  

However, this being the United States, the racists are trying to spoil the party. They always do. They very often fail, of course, so it makes it fun to mock these morons.

Still, it's incredibly disgusting we have to live with these white supremacists idiots. And I'm being understated when I say it like that.

It's important to check in with these odious morons, though, remind ourselves that we always must keep our guard up, and always resist the Nazis among us.

These scumbags started with Rotten Tomatoes reviews. They tried to make the "Black Panther" reviews really negative. I'll get into that first, then tell you even something worse.

Rotten Tomatoes is the online web site in which you, yes, you, can review movies. In general, Rotten Tomatoes is a fairly good indication of how much or little the general public likes a particular film.  That makes it a not bad guide to help you decide which movie you're going to see tonight.

Most Rotten Tomatoes critics, including the professional ones, thought "Black Panther" was terrific. In fact, it got the highest Rotten Tomatoes score for any superhero film.   As of Thursday, "Black Panther had a very nice 77 percent viewer approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Which means the racists failed again. They're so stupid.

As reported by CNN and numerous other media outlets, there was a move among the white supremacists among us.

Notice how the white supremacists tried to be cute. "Black Panther" is a Marvel Comic franchise. A lot of other popular movies come from the DC Comics franchise. The racists tried to spin this as just a friendly rivalry between Marvel and DC fans.

That element was probably in there, but I haven't heard of other organized movements on Facebook or elsewhere to discredit a superhero movie because of a comic book franchise competition.

As CNN says: "But given that "Black Panther" has an all-black cast and the storyline includes themes of race, many saw the move as more nefarious thatn just a friendly rivalry."

Then, of course it got worse.  As numerous outlets like Vox and  Huffington Post reported:

"Since Thursday, numerous false reports have bubbled up on social media claiming that white viewers were physically attacked by black fans at showings of the movie. Twitter and Facebook users have been taking images from unrelated incidents and reposting them, falsely claiming that they are photos of themselves or loved ones after racially motivated attacks."

I'm not sure of the purpose of these social media postings, other that to stir up the basest base of racists and Nazis, and to dupe the most gullible. And only the very most gullible, apparently.

The photos white people supposedly "beaten" by African-Americans at "Black Panther" showings come from such strange places and its so easy to trace them to their original, non-fake news sources.

One of them was a previously widely distributed photo of Rob Porter's ex-wife with a black eye.  Porter, you might recall, is the White House aide recently forced out of a job because of history with abuse of women.

Another fake photo was a still from the show "The Walking Dead." Another was a stock photo of a bloody paper towel.

The best revenge against this tiny army of small minded racists is how well "Black Panther" is doing at the box office.

As of Thursday, "Black Panther" is raking in the dough at the box office, and is destined to be one of the most lucrative movies on record, says Variety and many other media reports.

I'm sure almost everyone who goes to see "Black Panther" is not thinking about sticking it to the white supremacists. But in this context, it's still wicked fun to see this movie's popularity surge.

Fake News In The Near Future Will Be Scarier Than You Thought

Researchers have made convincing videos of Barack Obama
saying things he said years ago and inserting them into new
clips. It's a matter of time before fake news people can
make it look like people are saying things they never did. 

Donald Trump always yells about fake news when there's coverage that doesn't flatter him.

Maybe he's got a thin skin. But maybe he's ahead of his time.

In a scary story, Gizmodo had a report on research that uses machines to learn the facial movements of people and then render real looking lip movements for any piece of audio.

In other words, people with this program can make videos of anyone saying anything they want. You can see how easy it would be to make a convincing fake news clip of somebody saying something they really didn't.

How will we really know what's true and what's not.

According to the Gizmodo report,  researchers at the University of Washington developed the method to study the facial movements - in this case of Barack Obama. They were able to make it look like things he said when he was a law student were just said recently.

From there, it's easy to insert words and sentences into a video of Obama, or anybody else talking, and literally put words in their mouths.

What's worse, this techology is getting better and better, less and less expensive and easier and easier to use.

Which makes it a matter of time that anybody, even some teenager in a basement, can make a sophisticated fake news clip.

 Of course, this technology would not only be applied to news clips, to make it look like politicians and candidates were saying things they really didn't.  This could be applied to any video clip.

As Gizmodo put it: 

"If you thought fake-looking news websites were a problem, just imagine what a completely fake police body cam could do."

Scary indeed.

So Hard To Pick Wildest Donald Trump Related Weirdness

On the right is the fake Time magazine cover from
March 1, 2009 on display at Trump golf resorts.
On the left is the actual Time magazine cover
from March 2, 2009 

Another day, another moment of Trump and/or his minions being weird.

This morning's was one of the oddest and most idiotic. 

In case you haven't already heard, our Tweeter In Chief tweeted that "Morning Joe" host Mika Brzezinski was "bleeding from a face lift" during a New Years visit to Mar-a-Lago.  

Trump always gets crude with women he doesn't like, which is most of them.  And Brzezinski is clearly no fan of Trump, so there's that.

We've long known that Trump's M.O. is to push back harder against anybody who pushes against him, but we also know he has such a childish way of doing it. Which is what we got today.

"Look, I don't think that the president's ever been someone who gets attacked and doesn't push back...There have been an outrageous number of personal attacks, not just to him but to frankly everyone around him.... This is a president who fights fire with fire and certainly will not be allowed to be bullied by liberal media or liberal elites in Hollywood or anywhere else," said White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders. 

Anyway, Trump always dismisses facts reported in the media as "fake news" which leads me to my favorite Trump-related stupidity of the week.

Apparently, some of Trump's golf resorts have had fake news displayed on the walls. When this was reported this week, Trump complained about fake news about the fake news at his golf resorts.

Confused yet? Trump has that effect on people.

The golf resort fake news involved framed images of the cover of Time magazine dated March 1, 2009, with a big photo of Trump and headlines like "The Apprentice' is  television smash!' and another headline in all caps, "Trump is hitting on all fronts...even TV!"

This Time magazine cover is a fake, and a poorly done one at that. First of all, Time never has headlines with all caps and exclamation points. Time is too sober for that.

In any event, there was never a March 1, 2009 edition of Time magazine. There was an edition of Time magazine on March 2, 2009, but that one never mentions Trump and had actress Kate Winslet on the cover.

The Boston Globe said the Trump organization had no comment on how it came to have fake news on the walls of Trump's golf resorts even when he's always whining about "fake news."

Trump did complain that the Washington Post was giving us fake news because it had a report of the fake Time magazine covers at the golf courses.

As for Time magazine, the publication has asked the Trump resorts to take down the fake magazine covers. No word yet on whether they're complying.

Horrifying First Video Of So-Called Swedish Terrorist Attack Trump Referred To

I've got the scoop on the "terrer attack" in Sweden
Trump referred to last night. 

Pretty much everybody, including the entire population of Sweden, was mystified by the terrorist incident in Sweden Donald Trump referred to during his apparent 2020 presidential campaign kickoff in Melbourne, Florida Saturday.

"You look at what's happening in Germany, you look at what's happening last night in Sweden. Sweden, who would believe this. Sweden," Trump marveled to the crowd Saturday.

I guess the fake news mainstream media hid this terrorist attack from the public, just like Trump said the media is hiding all terrorists attacks.

Swedish news media had reports Saturday of a disturbed man setting himself on fire, a fatal workplace accident, and closed roads because of winter storm in northern Sweden, but nothing about a terrorist attack.

Trump did apparently watch a Fox news program Friday about refugees in Sweden committing crimes, so maybe that's what he's talking about?

The president would not confuse that with a real terrorist attack, would he? Of course not, and I've got the proof.

I was able to obtain video of the terrible attack in Sweden Friday. Here it is, but warning, it's not for the sensitive. It's scary - especially the gunfire towards the end:

Would Be Conservative Stinger O'Keefe Gets Stung

Conservative "sting" provacateur James O'Keefe is
definitely not very good at what he does.  

There's a lot of sideshows in the news lately about fake news and scandals and such.

This one is an interesting one for me, because it looks like a purveror of fake news just got faked out and stung.

This one involves the Trump inauguration. We'll get it soon, but first some background.

James O'Keefe is this young provocateur who does these sting videos that appear to show left wing or at least left-ish group doing bad things. He's famous for ending the political action group Acorn, and causing a lot of grief for Planned Parenthood.

Undercover stings by media organizations have their place, but unfortunatlely, O'Keefe always edited his sting videos to be completely misleading and factually wrong to make his conservative points.

Also, it seems O'Keefe isn't very good at it, either. Back in March, he apparently telephoned the Open Society Foundations, a philanthropic organization brought to us by George Soros, a hedge fund billionaire who contributes to liberal causes.

According to the New Yorker, a person believed to be O'Keefe left a message, but forgot to hang up after leaving the message.

The person "seemed to be conducting a meeting about how to perpetrate an elaborate sting on Soros," wrote New Yorker writer Jane Mayer.

Yep, O'Keefe just stung himself there in an attempted sting.

Also, back in 2010, O'Keefe suffered some fallout from his ACORN weirdness

He ended up being sentenced to three years probation, 100 hours of community service and a $1,500 fine for his role in a break-in and phone tampering in the offices of Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-Louisiana.

 Now, according to Huffington Post, O'Keefe recently got stung again.

If this story verifies, I suspect O'Keefe could get in trouble, too, we'll see.

Liberal groups The Undercurrent and Americans Take Action released videos they secretly took of what they say are O'Keefe operatives offering large sums of money to the liberal groups it they disrupt the inauguration and "put a stop to the inauguration."

The O'Keefe operatives appear to offer unlimited resources, including shutting down the bridges into Washington DC.

Although I don't know for sure if The Undercurrent videos are edited to make O'Keefe look particularly bad.

Still the idea of O'Keefe trying to falsely portray liberal groups as wanting to cause riots to disrupt the Trump administration is both galling and silly.

I do know that O'Keefe will probably continue to make his "Project Veritas" videos, as he calls them. If you really want fake news, enjoy the O'Keefe videos.

Otherwise the guy is irrelevant. Too bad he's one of the few people to not believe that. And too bad he's not very good at what he proclaims to be good at.

A Case Study On The Fight Between Alt Right Bullcrap And The Main Stream Media

Um a few people DID misbehave in Germany on New Years Eve
but it wasn't exactly an Islamic fundamentalist insurgency
at Breitbart suggests in this article

Having safely installed their hero Donald Trump as President and secured their man, Steve Bannon as their chief of staff, Breitbart News seems like it has now turned its attention to the upcoming German elections.  

Although they're probably not coordinating with Breitbart, I'm sure Russia is delighted by the wacko right wing "news" site's help.

The latest bit of drama involves a Breitbart "news" article that "informs" us that a mob of Islamic extremists, numbering around 1,000 or so and yelling "Allahu Akbar" (God is Great) set a church on fire in the city of Dortmund.

The Breitbart headline read, "Revealed: 1,000 man mob attack police, set Germany's oldest church alight on New Year's Eve."  The article went on to say the mob was massing around al Qaeda and Islamic flags

Dortmund Police said the reality was a whole lot tamer than what Breitbart envisioned. To me, it's not even news.

Yep, lots of people were out celebrating New Year's Eve in Dortmund. Some of them might have been Muslim.  Some people in the crowd definitely took things too far, but this was also not anything remotely resembling an Islamic extremist insurgency in Germany.

Police said an  average number of  people were arrested for misbehaving on New Year's Eve, the Guardian reports

There's no evidence the crowd was actually celebrating Islamic extremists  in Dortmund. A stray spark from fireworks did cause  a small fire in some netting in construction scaffolding at the church.

The minor blaze was quickly put out. The church, which is not the oldest in Germany, was undamaged, says the Guardian.

Yawn.

My conspiratorial mind thinks Breitbart wanted to help stir up right-wind passions in Germany to help continue the authoritarian march across the globe let by Putin.

I couldn't find the church article on Breitbart, but their front page feature has them apoplectic over a New York Times article this past Sunday that suggested ways to thwart fake news sites.

Third parties and bots often place advertising in web sites, and the business or entity that's being advetised is often unaware of which web sites its on.

This is why ads seem to "follow" you from site to site. Algorthms latch on to your interests, and those ads that target you follow you. Even if you go to websites the advertiser doesn't like.

Those advertisers can, of course, ask to be removed from those sites, and that's what the New York times highlighted.

The New York Times article highlighted a Twitter group called Sleeping Giants that alerts businesses and non-profits that they're being advertised on sites that promote lies, white supremacists or bullying that can inspire attacks on Muslims, women, gays, you name it.

Sleeping Giants has targeted Breitbart in particular lately because "they're the biggest fish," a founder of Sleeping Giants told the New York Times.

Just today, Sleeping Giants crowed that they got the travel booking website Trevago from advertisting at Breitbart.

Of course today, Breitbart countered that it's the New York Times that's the purveryor of fake news.

Breitbart said the New York Times is being hypocritcial because they say they're for press freedom and at the same time they are trying to squelch the journalism of Breitbart.

Though I question whether Breitbart is journalistm, but whatever.

I guess everybody has their own reality now, so nothing is truly fact based. They'll believe whatever they want to believe.

For its part, Breitbart is doubling down on its "reporting" from  Germany (We can't disappoint our rabid readers with a retraction, can we!)

If you read Breitbart's doubling down article in reaction to the take down by main stream media, notice the um, double speak.

The problem is Breitbart is a master at using certain words that incite hate. The Guardian might refer to the people in the city square in Germany as New Year's Eve crowd. Breitbart calls them a "mob."

Breitbart plays with definitions. German police said most of the people in the square were "peaceful" Breitbart says they were not because some were lauching fireworks, and others were "egging" them on.

The video that even Breitbart posts to "prove' their point shows, yes, people illegally launching fireworks, while most in the crowd stand and gawk at the spectacle, at an outdoor party that's gone out of control. To me, gawking is peaceful enough.

Breitbart was also forced to backtrack on the Allahu Akbar shouts. They admit in the follow up that that phrase is about as common as when Christians say "Amen."

As Matt Gertz in Media Matters points out, Breitbart in its original reporting strung three separate facts together to create a false nightmare scenario.

1. There were about 1,000 people in the square.
2. A few of them shouting "Allah Akbar"
3. One person got careless with fireworks, starting a small blaze.

These three facts became this in Breitbart world: "A mob of more than, 1,000 men chanted "Allah Akbar launched fireworks at police and set fire to a historic church."

Bit of a difference, eh?

Breitbart claims its facts were accurate, but Media Matters points out the obvious: You can't string together facts  to create new "facts."

As Gertz wrote: "The relationship that Breitbart claimed existed between those facts is also relevant in terms of whether the story is accurate."

Everybody always accuses their opponent of twisting the facts. Breitbart takes it to a new art form.

I guess it's a war between the misinformation campaign by the likes of Breitbart and the people who want to squelch the misinformation by hitting where it hurts: The revenue stream.

It's a bare knuckle fight that I see going on for a long time.

And it's one of those fights that will make or break the Trump administration, and perhaps American and democracy itself.

Students Can't Figure Out What's Fake News

For a democracy to survive, you need a well-informed citizenry that knows how to get accurate information.

As many of you know, things are going so well in that department in the US of A.

Much has been written about fake news on social media that misled voters, and fired them up to vote for Donald Trump, or make other election decisions based on false info.  

The upcoming generation of young voters might not do any better, if a new Stanford University study is any indication.

Says The Verge, via the Wall Street Journal: 

"According to the study, 82 percent of students could not distinguish between a sponsored post and an actual  news article on the same website. Nearly 70 percent of middle schoolers thought they had no reason to distrust a sponsored finance article written by the CEO of a bank, and many students evaluated the trustworthiness of tweets based on their level of detail and the size of the photos..."

Stanford researchers recommend students learn to cross check the accuracy of websites and articles using other sources, and not to think a high Google search ranking means the site is more accurate.

Schools are increasingly trying to teach students to better evaluate what they see on line, but obviously, a lot more needs to be done.

Because of the uproar over the recent U.S. elections, Facebook has said it's working on ways to filter out fake news sites, and Google will ban fake news sites from its ad network.

But there will always be bad information on the web.

You'd think everyone would know by now you can't believe something is true just because it's on the internet, but clearly not.