Author: J.P. Knowles

Former Google employee Tristan Harris is warning people about the negative impacts social media and Big Tech can have on people in a new Netflix documentary.

In “The Social Dilemma” Harris is a central figure in the film’s purpose of “creating a global moment of awareness” and is an outspoken critic of tech companies using psychology to influence consumers.

Harris appeared on “Bill Hemmer Reports” to talk about the documentary. “This is, I think, the most deep and subtle issue of our time… I believe it’s actually an existential threat to democracy.”

To further explain how dangerous technology can be Harris held up his smartphone and said, “Three billion people have a brain implant that’s a remotely controlled brain, because — especially in the coronavirus times — we are relying on these things to makes sense of what’s reality out there in the world. They have become the fabric for our sense-making and the fabric of our choice-making, the fabric of how children develop.”

“The Social Dilemma” features several insiders from Silicon Valley explaining the dark side of social media, with everyone from the co-inventor of the “like” button to high-powered executives weighing in.

The film documents Harris’s attempt to change the industry from the inside, which included creating a presentation that was passed around to all his Google colleagues.

“It basically just said, ‘Never before in history have 50 designers, 20 to 35-year-old white guys in California, made decisions that would have an impact on two billion people,’” Harris commented in the film. “Two billion people will have thoughts that they didn’t intend to have because a designer at Google said, ‘This is how notifications work on that screen that you wake up to in the morning.’”

Harris confessed his fears to host Bill Hemmer Thursday.

“It’s because of this business model that’s at the heart of these technology companies, which is that they make more money the more time they get you to spend,” he said and added that people are more likely to spend time on content that agrees with their line of thought.

“It’s bad for the collective … no matter where you fall on all these sides, we need to be able to agree in society on what we want to do about various problems we have,” Harris explained. “Whether it’s poverty, or climate change or racism, whatever we care about, we all have to come together and have a shared set of facts … technology makes us operate in narrower and narrower, incompatible views of reality.”

Harris stated that someone should have “blown the whistle” on the tech industry a long time ago.

Hemmer suggested that Harris was “painting a pretty dark picture” and the former Google employee wholeheartedly agreed.

“You’re raising an excellent point,” Harris responded. “Fundamentally, the question we have to ask is, ‘Are they designed by child psychologists asking what’s best for children?’”

In fact, Harris said, most apps are designed by people who only care about creating an addicting product.

“It’s kind of the new Big Tobacco,” he said. “It’s Big Tobacco for our brains.”

Recently some ruined ballots have turned up in California and election officials have had to remind voters not to disinfect their mail-in ballots.

According to a public information officer Jana Haynes, several Sacramento County voters dropped off their “ruined ballots” because they had attempted to clean them with a liquid sanitizer if fear of contracting COVID-19.

“Voters do not need to be wary of covid-19 exposure on their ballot paper or any of the contents inside their mailed envelope,” said Hayes.

Officials say the risk of exposure from a paper’s surface is very low. Additionally, the paper ballot inside the mailer has gone “untouched for at least a week from the time it was stuffed, taken to USPS, and in transit to your mailbox.”

Not only is cleaning a ballot with sanitizer unnecessary but it could cost voters their vote.

If a high alcohol content liquid, like that of hand sanitizer, is used to clean paper it can smear the ink on the page which would result in the ballot being “unreadable,” Haynes warned.

For those voters who have already dropped of destroyed ballots, officials were able to provide them with new ballots and void the ruined ones to they could still cast their vote.

In the event that a submitted ballot is unreadable or destroyed and has been separated from its identifying envelope, which Haynes says is known to happen early in the process to maintain anonymity, they have safeguards in place.

This information is very important because, as Haynes stressed, “as always, we want every vote to count.”

Democratic vice presidential nominee Senator Kamala Harris argues that during Wednesday’s debate that her running mate former vice president Joe Biden “has been very clear” about not ending fracking if he were elected president. However, past remarks indicate that both of them have been inconsistent with their position on the issue.

Harris publically supported a fracking ban when she was still seeking the Democratic presidential nomination.

She directly opposed fracking at a CNN town hall event. “There’s no question I’m in favor of banning fracking,” she said and went on to explain that if elected her first move would be to address the practice on public land, and then support legislation that would do more.

“And this is something I’ve taken on in California,” Harris added.

Clips of her contradictions have made their way around Twitter since the debate.

Then there’s Joe Biden, who has muddied his position on fracking in the past. During a debate in July 2019, CNN’s Dana Bash asked him, “Just to clarify, would there be any place for fossil fuels, including coal and fracking, in a Biden administration?”

“No, we would — we would work it out,” he responded. “We would make sure it’s eliminated and no more subsidies for either one of those, either — any fossil fuel.”

However, when addressing a more targeted audience in Pennsylvania, Biden took on a different tone. In an April interview with Pittsburgh’s KDKA, Biden said he would only ban fracking on federal property, claiming that this would only have an impact on a small part of overall fracking.

“No, I would not shut down this industry. I know our Republican friends are trying to say I said that. I said I would not do any new leases on federal lands. Ninety percent of the leases are not on federal land, to begin with,” said Biden.

He added, “I would make sure … the water is not being contaminated. But I would not shut it down, no.”

This wishy-washy behavior is typical Biden modus operandi so I’m not at all surprised that Senator Harris has been caught making these contradictory statements.

When President Trump was released from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center after spending the weekend getting treatment for his coronavirus diagnosis Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden took a couple of cheap shots by posting a meme of the president not wearing a mask upon his arrival back to the White House along with a video of himself putting a mask on like he was a COVID superhero.

The caption along with the image read, “Wear a mask.”

But without a voice in his ear telling him what to do his wife, Jill Biden, had to literally pull him away from a group of reporters in order to keep up the appearance of maintaining social distancing guidelines, at least until November’s election.

Biden was answering questions for reporters about next week’s presidential debate between himself and President Trump after the president recently tested positive for COVID-19, along with the First Lady Melania Trump and several other Republicans in Trump’s inner circle, when his wife had to walk up behind him and physically grab his arms to pull him to a safe distance away from the crowd.

Get you a partner that looks out for you like @DrBiden does for @JoeBiden ✨ pic.twitter.com/sNxhKVnoXt

— Drew Heskett (@DrewHeskett) October 5, 2020

“I’m sorry,” the Democratic nominee said and added that he would be attending the next debate as long as proper safety protocols were established and put into place.

“Listen to the science,” Biden said. “If the scientists say that it’s safe — the distances are safe — then I think that’s fine. I’ll do whatever the experts say is appropriate for me to do.”

Shortly after President Trump returned to the White House on Monday evening his campaign announced that he planning on attending the debate next Thursday.

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden is considering New York Governor Andrew Cuomo as attorney general for his potential administration.

Speculation of his role within a Biden administration began when aides at the National Governor Association, which Cuomo chairs,  began looking for contingencies to replace him.

Democratic donors close to Cuomo have allegedly reported that the governor is being pushed for the attorney general job and that Biden is considering him for the role based on their many years of friendship.

An attorney general within the Biden administration would be under heavy political pressure to go after former Trump administration officials and manage civil unrest over police violence that has affected cities nationwide.

Gov. Cuomo was asked earlier this year if he would accept a potential Cabinet post within a Biden administration. He replied that he was content to remain Governor of New York.

“I was in a Cabinet, I was in Bill Clinton’s Cabinet, been there, done that,” Cuomo said. “I don’t want to go to Washington. They couldn’t drag me, they couldn’t force me. I only represent the people of the state. I have no agenda besides theirs.”

“I am governor of New York and that’s all I want to be.” @NYGovCuomo says he supports Joe Biden for president and he would not accept a cabinet position if offered. pic.twitter.com/1dUuTUjAx6

— Good Morning America (@GMA) June 17, 2020

Cuomo was Secretary of Housing and Urban Development from 1997 to 2001 during the Clinton administration.

Earlier this year, Cuomo’s national profile was raised for how he handled the coronavirus pandemic. However, his favorability dropped after he mandated that coronavirus patients be sent to nursing homes from hospitals, a decision which was blamed for nearly 6,000 deaths.

The mandate required nursing homes to take patients in as long as they were deemed medically stable. The nursing homes were further prohibited from testing any incoming resident for the coronavirus before their arrival.

The Director of Communications for President Trump’s 2020 campaign, Tim Murtaugh, said, “There is zero chance that President Trump will appoint Gov. Cuomo attorney general in his second term.”

The Washington Post called out Senator Kamala Harris for her “little history lesson” during the vice presidential debate that “wasn’t exactly true.”

While on the subject of the confirmation of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court things got heated when Harris responded to Pence’s argument that President Trump’s appointment is following precedent by suggesting that one of the most revered Republican presidents would be in favor of allowing a newly-elected president to fill a vacant seat instead of moving forward with a confirmation with just a few weeks left until Election Day.

“I’m so glad we went through a little history lesson. Let’s do that a little more,” Harris said arrogantly. “In 1864… Abraham Lincoln was up for reelection. And it was 27 days before the election. And a seat became open on the United States Supreme Court. Abraham Lincoln’s party was in charge not only of the White House but the Senate. But Honest Abe said, ‘It’s not the right thing to do. The American people deserve to make the decision about who will be the next president of the United States, and then that person will be able to select who will serve on the highest court of the land.’”

According to The Washington Post’s report, Harris’s description of events that took place under Lincoln was wrong.

“Harris is correct that a seat became available 27 days before the election. And that Lincoln didn’t nominate anyone until after he won,” the report stated. “But there is no evidence he thought the seat should be filled by the winner of the election. In fact, he had other motives for the delay.”

According to Lincoln historian Michael Burlingame, the president told his aides he wanted to delay his Supreme Court confirmation process because he was “waiting to receive expressions of public opinion from the country,” though the report noted, “that didn’t mean he was waiting for ballots so much as the mail.”

The Post further explained, “The overarching effect of the delay is that it held Lincoln’s broad but shaky coalition of conservative and radical Republicans together. Congress was in recess until early December, so there would have been no point in naming a man before the election anyway. Lincoln shrewdly used that to his advantage. If he had lost the election, there is no evidence he wouldn’t have filled the spot in the lame-duck session.”

National Review senior writer Dan McLaughin did not take this history faux pas lightly and accused Harris of “dishonesty” with her Lincoln story.

“Lincoln, of course, said no such thing,” McLaughlin said. “He sent no nominee to the Senate in October 1864 because the Senate was out of session until December.”

He added, “Kamala Harris is simply inventing history.”

Republican lawmakers have made it a priority to confirm Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court before November’s election. Barrett was nominated by President Trump to fill the seat left vacant by the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg after her death in September. Trump forewarned of the Democrat’s plan to “pack” the court with progressive judges in order to prevent a conservative majority.

“If they ever got in, day one, this would be the first move they make, [to] end the filibuster — the nuclear option, as they call it — and they will do that,” said Trump. “Not a week will go by, probably not a day will go by.”

The president also made it clear that he was “not interested” in participating in a virtual debate with Biden telling Hannity, “I’m not Joe Biden, I’m not going to do a virtual debate behind a computer screen.”

Trump added that Biden, if victorious, “won’t be president for three months” before Kamala Harris steps in and “takes over” control.

“She’s the most liberal person in the Senate. She’s not a socialist, she’s a step beyond socialism,” Trump said of the California Senator.

During the vice-presidential debate, Mike Pence called out Joe Biden for plagiarism scandals from the former vice president’s past when arguing that the Democratic nominee’s coronavirus plan looked very similar to President Trump’s.

“When you read the Biden plan it reads a lot like what Trump and I have been doing every step of the way,” Pence said to his debate opponent, Senator Kamala Harris, noting the use of advanced testing and building up personal protective equipment. “It looks a little bit like plagiarism, something Joe Biden knows a little bit about.”

While running for president in 1987, Biden held an event at the Iowa State Fair and used entire portions of a speech from a British politician as his own.

The New York Times reported on the fiasco saying Biden “lifted Mr. Kinnock’s closing speech with phrases, gestures, and lyrical Welsh syntax intact for his own closing speech at a debate at the Iowa State Fair on Aug. 23 – without crediting Mr. Kinnock.”

Biden mimicked Kinnock’s actions during the opening part of the address when he said he was the first “in a thousand generations” from his family to go to college, then gestured to his wife and said the same about her. Biden later admitted he had family members who did attend college before him.

Biden’s staffers remained defensive about the allegations of plagiarism but the damage was done and the candidate dropped out of the race by the end of that month.

Later the same year, Biden admitted to plagiarizing a law review journal for a paper while attending Syracuse University.

A law school faculty report confirmed that Biden had “used five pages from a published law review article without quotation or attribution” for his fifteen-page paper.

Biden claimed to have made a mistake in the citation process and asked school administrators not to expel him. He wrote at the time, “My intent was not to deceive anyone. For if it were, I would not have been so blatant.”

In an effort to assert his sincerity, Biden released a 65-page file about his time at Syracuse. However, that might have been a mistake because it contained records of poor grades, mixed evaluations from instructors, and details of the plagiarism.

Instead of addressing some of the real issues we’re facing in our country, Democratic vice-presidential candidate Kamala Harris thought it would be a good idea to attack President Trump over the misinformation that he only paid $750 in federal taxes the year he was elected into the White House.

“We now know because of great investigative journalism that Donald Trump paid $750 in taxes,” Harris said. “When I first heard about it, I literally said, ‘You mean $750,000?’ Nope $750.”

Harris is referring to the recent report by The New York Times claiming they had secret information on the president’s 2016 and 2017 taxes. The Times also reported that Trump paid no federal income taxes for ten of the fifteen years prior to becoming president.

“We now know Donald Trump owes, and is in debt for $400 million, and just so that everyone is clear, when we say in debt – it means you owe money to somebody,” Harris argued.

“And it’d be really good to know who the president of the United States, the commander-in-chief owes money to,” she added, “because the American people have a right to know what is influencing the president’s decisions and is he making those decisions on the best interests of the American people….or self-interest?”

President Trump brushed off the report calling it “fake news” and said his tax returns would be available as soon as the IRS completes their audit.

Vice President Pence did not shy away from the accusations and said, “The American people have a president who’s a businessman, a job creator, he’s paid tens of millions of dollars in taxes – payroll taxes, property taxes, he’s created tens of thousands of American jobs.”

“The president said those public reports were not accurate,” he continued, “and the president also released literally stacks of financial disclosures, the American people can view.”

The president did not directly respond to Harris’s accusations but did give praise to his vice president in a tweet.

“Mike Pence is doing GREAT! She is a gaffe machine,” Trump wrote.