Oh, and Alabama’s Jeff Sessions is about to be U.S. Attorney General –

The Big Picture –
By Glynn Wilson –

Let me start this morning by repeating the two key words guaranteed to make the Facebook home page news feed and the FB trending news feed: This column is about fake news and golden showers.

New American Journal graphic by Evan Riddle

Also, I might be holding my tongue funny in my cheek as I write, no mean feat. By that, of course, I mean I might not mean what I’m actually saying, so no, this is NOT a straight news story.

I can’t help myself (or hold my pee) but I must start with the opening setup from Saturday Night Live last night.

No, I will not quote or link to Buzzfeed, that fake news outfit that let the golden shower news out of the proverbial bag. While Buzzfeed, a web clickbait tabloid that wants people to think it is a serious news outlet, was resoundingly bashed by the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Poynter Institute and other sources too numerous to name and link to them all, the truth of the matter no longer matters.

Everybody in the world who is marginally paying attention now thinks the Russians have compromising information on President-elect Donald Trump, allegedly information that Trump has a fetish for Golden Showers, the pornographic term for being turned on by watching women (or men) pee (or worse, having someone pee on you).

Also allegedly, this is the information being used to blackmail Trump into being friendly toward Russia and its former KGB spy chief president Vladimir Putin.

This is what “opposition research” looks like peeps.

Does it really matter at this point whether it is true or not? Does it matter whether the Russians had this information but held back on using it, or whether it was paid for by the Jeb Bush campaign for president or unnamed Democrats, as some news organizations are suggesting?

Remember when Karl Rove got George W. Bush elected governor of Texas with an email rumor campaign claiming that Ann Richards was a lesbian? That was back in the day when email was an effective way to gaslight someone, using anonymous emails and comments to try to “manipulate someone by psychological means into questioning their own sanity.”

It never worked on me, but I have used it in the past to some effect. In recent years I have sworn off it, vowing to stick to the straight and narrow of reporting real news, not sensational blogging.

Now Democrats are reveling in this fake news and sharing it all over Facebook, because they are horrified that Trump legitimately won the election and is about to be inaugurated president this Friday. Tens of thousands of Democrats will descend on The Mall in Washington, D.C. the day after the inauguration on Saturday to protest a man they do not accept as their president.

Fine. Great. Maybe Trump’s election will do one good thing for American democracy: Destroy voter apathy. Take it to the streets, America. We’ve been calling for that for many years.

Mostly you just sat there watching CNN, a capitalist news outfit that was discredited in my eyes long before it elevated the Buzzfeed fake news story about Trump to national television news: CNN Incorrectly Reports Individual Mandate Struck Down by Supreme Court.

That’s all water under the proverbial bridge now. Or was that pee under the bridge? It’s hard to tell in the dark.

I am trying to be like a flashlight and shine the light on some facts. But it feels sort of like the batteries are almost dead. If people are not interested in seeing the light, let them grope around in the dark and see how that works out for them.

Hint: This is not going to go well.

Hint 2: I shared a link to a documentary on PBS about uranium the other day and it did not receive one single like, share or comment: Uranium – Twisting the Dragon’s Tail: Part 1.

The only way to get anybody to pay attention to anything on Facebook right now is to write about fake news, golden showers or Russian hacking. Nothing else is trending. Well, almost nothing.

Attorney General Confirmation

Former Saturday Night Live comic and now Minnesota Senator Al Franken did manage to make the Facebook trending news feed this week for his comments opposing the nomination and confirmation of Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions as Attorney General.

I did some checking around in my online focus group about this and it seems many of my friends don’t even know about the trending news feed, even people who read more news than I do and are always on Facebook. Most people just look at their so-called “Home” page, which generates a news feed based on what their friends are posting about.

Listen up. if you go to your home page and look over to the top right-hand side of the page, you will see a blue text link called “Trending.” You have to click on the blue text link that says “see more” to really explore what is out there, and then you will see some categories. The first category is “Top Trends,” followed by “Politics,” then “Science and Technology,” then “Sports” and “Entertainment.”

This is what the Russian hacking-fake news story competition is all about, getting the mainstream media back on top of the Facebook trending news feed, as I have already written: What Cost Hillary Clinton the Election and Handed the Country to Trump?

He has faded from all the categories now, but on Friday, Al Franken garnered the top position on the Top Trends and Politics categories for awhile. If you clicked on his name to see what people were reporting and saying about him, you would have seen this link to an MSNBC video, since Franken went on the “Morning Joe” show and announced his decision to vote against Sessions’ confirmation.

Most of the links on the feed, however, at least when I looked at it, were stories and comments on posts from something called the Conservative Tribune, a fake news site owned by — who knows? Even Snopes can’t seem to figure it out.

You would also have seen this, a story in the conservative Washington, D.C.-based Moony paper: Al Franken opposes Jeff Sessions’ confirmation as attorney general.

I actually shared the direct link on my personal Facebook page to the C-SPAN video clip of Franken’s questioning of Sessions, and complimented him on being the only Senator in the room on the committee to do his job under the constitution. He showed Sessions to be a liar, under oath.

But does anybody really care? Former President Ronald Reagan proved you can’t be charged with perjury if you claim a falty memory, to wit: “To the best of my recollection.” So rather than being charged with a crime for lying to Congress, clearly Sessions has the votes to be confirmed and will take office soon as the Attorney General of the United States, the nation’s top law enforcement officer.

Georgia Congressman John Lewis also made news, and the Facebook trending news feed (along with a bunch of fake news sites attacking Lewis) for his comments on “Meet the Press”: Rep. John Lewis: ‘I Don’t See Trump as a Legitimate President’.

Every news organization in Christendom tried to get in on the clickbait of it all by doing stories about Trump’s Twitter tweets attacking Lewis.

I will not repeat it or include copies of the tweets here. Sorry. I don’t consider repeating fake news tweets to be news, plus, I’ve got to go recharge my flashlight batteries.

Do you want the truth? Can you handle the truth?

Or would you rather be peed on in a golden shower of fake news?

One final question for you: Do you know of one single person who changed his or her vote from Hillary Clinton to Donald Trump because of any real or fake news story about Clinton’s emails, even the Oct. 11 FBI announcement about the new investigation of Clinton’s emails? If so, please get them in touch with me. I would like to meet and interview them.

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