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Wonderings are brought to you every week by our good friends at Gator's Bayou. If you're looking for a real, authentic Cajun restaurant in Lubbock complete with a fun, Louisiana-style atmosphere, Gator's Bayou is the place to go!

Oh, and get the Dirty Bird. You can thank me later.

Media Days have arrived throughout the country for every major college football conference, meaning the teams that make up those conferences are busy convening to preview their upcoming seasons.

But lets be very honest here: Media Days have become an absolute drag. It's a cookie cutter, "Your Generic Answer Goes Here" Festival of bland commentary and gamesmanship where every team is simply there for Marshawn Lynchian purposes.

It's a contest to see who can say the least and make the smallest amount of noise, all in the name of simply not saying anything that might cause a stir or create any kind of controversy.

And I fully believe that college football programs are shooting themselves in the foot by taking the strong, silent type approach.

I think that doubly counts for Texas Tech football going into 2017. The narrative for the Red Raiders regionally and nationally is all fairly in-step: Defense has been terrible, you've got to replace a ton of production on offense, and unless you take a real step forward, this is all she wrote for Kliff Kingsbury's program in Lubbock.

That's what most folks around the state of Texas believe about the program. They, bluntly, see you as an afterthought heading into this fall.

And while that could end up being true, Kliff Kingsbury and his four players - Dylan Cantrell, KeKe Coutee, Cam Batson, and Jah'Shawn Johnson - have a chance to tell their side of the story. They have a chance to try and shift the narrative with what they tell all that listen on Monday in Frisco. They have a chance to influence the message.

But will they?

Again, Kliff has never been one to make bold statements or hold court at really any media event of any kind. I understand that and the idea behind it, but this year of all years is inarguably the one season where you need to come out with a strong message to set the tone. You can write the headlines you want to be out there instead of allowing media members to run roughshod over your program, because they'll dictate the common thoughts on your team's season if you don't.

And I fully understand not wanting your players to make any regrettable statements or blurt out any facepalmy ideas. But you have a group of four intelligent, well thought of players that I'd be absolutely stunned to see embarrass your program. Instead of coaching their personalities or opinions out of them, let them be a little bold. Let them be themselves. It's a group you can trust to represent Red Raider football and help spread the message of what you really feel about your team behind closed doors, which I know to be a team that believes they're being overlooked.

So, my plea to Texas Tech football: Let your hair down. Stand out from the crowd. Do yourself a favor by controlling the message. You need to.

5. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 - I'll admit that I didn't love this movie, but it slides in at 5 because I don't think it's been one of the better overall summer movie seasons in the last decade or so. Still, it's a lot of fun and retains the spirit of the first. The story isn't great and it's a little clunky, though.

4. Spider-Man: Homecoming - Wow, I could not have been happier with the way that Marvel went about trying to capture the spirit of what Peter Parker and Spider-Man really embody. It's a John Hughes movie for 2017 in a superhero film's body, and it was a great setup for the character's future as a key cog in the Marvel Universe. My one complaint is that the action was a little dull and wasn't directed particularly well.

3. Wonder Woman - I was completely skeptical of this movie going in with as poorly executed as the rest of the DC Movies have been so far, but Patty Jenkins deserves a standing ovation for what she accomplished here. It's fun, epic, and has real heart. Gal Gadot and Chris Pine are both great, too.

2. War for the Planet of the Apes - I caught this on Thursday evening, and my oh my. This is a wonderful swan song for what I now consider one of the greatest movie trilogies in modern movie history. Since it just came out, I won't spoil much, but Andy Serkis as Caesar and Woody Harrelson as the leader of the human army are both fantastic and play off each other very, very well.

1. Baby Driver - This will be the best movie I see all year, and I'll stand by that until January 1st. I don't think The Last Jedi, Dunkirk, or any other film will be as good. I'm completely serious, too. This is as well directed of a movie as you're going to to see in modern film. It's a masterclass in directing and editing. The music is a living character in it, too. This embodies the magic of why we go to the movies.

Read the rest here:
Wonderings: Tech can control the message at Media Days. Will They? - Rivals.com (press release)

The addition of Chromecast networknotifications probably seemed like a good idea at the time. They allow you to control media even if you aren't the one who started playback. However, you see those notifications on your device even if you're not watching or listening to the content, and you can end up with multiple cast notifications on a busy network. Google is finally making these notifications optional with a togglethat turns offall the network notifications for your Chromecast or Google Home.

Previously, you could only disable the notifications on a per device basis. So, each person on your network had to go into their Google settings and turn off the notifications. According to Google's Chromecast support page, there's a toggle in the Google Home app that can disable the notifications for all content at the network level. Casting to thedevice will no longer produce a media notification for anyone on your network. Here's how you do it... or how you will eventually.

Google seems to have jumped the gun a little adding this to the support page. No one on the AP team has this optionin settings yet, even those of us in the preview program. Give it a few days and the toggle will probably appear.

This seems to be live for everyone now.

Read more:
[Update: Live for everyone] You can disable all network media notifications for Chromecasts and Google Homes - Android Police

Donald Trump Jr.

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A daily roundup of the biggest stories in right-wing media.

Conservatives continued to debate the implications of Donald Trump Jr.s meeting with a Russian lawyer during the campaign as new details about other attendees emerged on Friday. On Fox News, Shepard Smith and Chris Wallace met those revelations with incredulity.

On The Fox News Specialists, however, Eric Bolling insisted that the ties of one of the revealed attendees, Rinat Akhmetshin, to the firm behind the anti-Trump dossier compiled by Christopher Steele suggest that the Russians might have been colluding with Hillary Clinton to get information on Donald Trump.

At the Resurgent, Erick Erickson wrote that the Trump Jr. meeting had taken on the appearance of a setup:

Erickson explained that the slow revelation of details about the meeting, which presumably would have been useful to Clinton before the election if it was a setup, may have been intended to cover the Democrats tracks. If you had helped stage the meeting and didnt want it to look like a set up, wouldnt you let the reporters run their natural course instead of throwing it all at them? he asked. But I certainly think we need to ask if the Russians were playing both sides and no one wants to ask that, if only because many of those in the position to ask it favored the losing side.

Conservatives dug more deeply into the Senates latest version of their health care bill on Friday. National Review published an editorial calling the bill a step in the right direction:

National Review editor Rich Lowry lauded Ted Cruzs work on the bill in a separate post. If this bill goes down, Republicans arent going to come back at it with a more free-market approachin fact the opposite, he wrote. This is why its been so important that Cruz has stayed at the table, worked at persuading his colleagues, and moved a flawed bill to the right. His approach is a stark contrast to that of Rand Paul, who is simply opposed to anything proposed by leadership and anything short of his vision of purity.

At the Federalist, John Daniel Davidson praised the Cruz amendment, which allows the sale of non-Obamacare compliant insurance plans. This would almost certainly be an improvement over Obamacare because it would allow room for an actual insurance market, for Americans who are actually insurable, he wrote. For those who arent, there would be the exchanges, which would function like high-risk pools. One of the great follies of Obamacare is that it didnt allow insurance to function as insurance anymore. If you force insurance companies to cover things that have already happened, thats not insurance; its a junky, yet expensive, version of health care as a public utility.

On Fox Business, conservative commentator and Trump supporter Harlan Hill said that Republicans not on the same team as Trump should fear the consequences of not fulfilling promises to repeal and replace Obamacare.

If they can not muster the support to pass a repeal and replacement of Obamacare that theyve been promising their constituents for years now, then were going to fire them, he said. Its that clear and it has to be done this year. No excuses. No more recesses.

View original post here:
Today in Conservative Media: Maybe Hillary Was Behind Trump Jr.'s Meeting! - Slate Magazine (blog)

When one of Australia's biggest political donors sought to deny links to a secretive Chinese Communist Party lobbying organisation, he did so in the style befitting a billionaire.

Chau Chak Wing, who has given more than $4 million to the major parties, instructed his lawyer to write to the chief executive of Fairfax Media, Greg Hywood, and the ABC's managing director, Michelle Guthrie. He demanded apologies, saying: "Chau has no knowledge of an entity referred to ... as the United Front Work Department".

Late last month, Chau also conducted an "exclusive", front-page interview with the Murdoch newspaper, The Australian, in which he claimed he had "no idea" of the existence of the organisation.

"As to the entity referred to by the ABC as the 'united front work department', I have no idea what this is," Mr Chau said in the story, referring to a joint Fairfax Media and Four Corners investigation aired month.

The investigation revealed ASIO's concerns about links between Chinese Communist Party-aligned organisations that seek to advance Beijing's interests, and political donors such as Chau. The Australian citizen, who is one of the nation's bigger donors and philanthropists, has hosted senior ministers, diplomats and former leaders Kevin Rudd and John Howard at conferences held at Chau's palatial Guangdong resort.

The fallout from the Fairfax Media and Four Corners' investigation which comes as the US grapples with allegations that Russia sought influence in America's political system includes a commitment from the Turnbull government to introduce new laws to counter foreign interference and fresh debate about political donations reform.

The United Front Work Department is an obscure but important Chinese Communist Party organisation. President Xi Jinping described its work in a landmark 2014 speech as a "magic weapon" for the "Chinese people's great rejuvenation," and a means for the Party to seize victory.

Academics say the UFWD is dedicated to asserting and spreading Party influence inside China and abroad, which is why it has caught the attention of ASIO.

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A simple Mandarin Google search reveals some of Chau's United Front Work Department connections.

A deeper dive into the online archives of Chinese government agencies and media offers more clues: pictures of Chau hosting UFWD leaders; UFWD publications featuring Chau; and documents from government websites listing Chau as a member of UFWD-aligned organisations.

And then there is the file that forms part of the database US army officer Chelsea Manning copied onto a Lady Gaga CD and leaked to Wikileaks in 2010. This "sensitive" file is about Chau and the United Front Work Department. It was written by Guangzhou-based US Consul General Robert Goldberg in 2007 and distributed to American intelligence agencies.

While its contents have not before been made public, the cable has most likely been analysed by ASIO as part of the 'five eyes' intelligence sharing arrangement.

It details a meeting Goldberg held with Chau in Guangdong, a province in China's booming Pearl River Delta region. According to Goldberg, Chau told him in this meeting that "the provincial government, with central government backing, had decided" that a new business organisation in the region was needed to assist "overseas Chinese". Chau was to lead it.

Goldberg wrote that the founding meeting of the Guangdong Overseas Chinese Businessmen's Association "clearly had political implications, with participation by [several Chinese Communist Party figures including] ... the director of the United Front Department".

Despite Chau's "comments to the contrary", Goldberg asserted that the Communist Party involvement in Chau's organisation suggested "its formation has more political meaning than economic that it is part of the party's United Front strategy."

"It strikes us that the Association is essentially a creature of the CPC's [Chinese Communist Party's] United Front program."

Chau's United Front links have also been detailed by the UFWD itself. In 2016, a Guangzhou district United Front Work Department committee published a photograph showing Chau meeting with the local UFWD chief, Xie Wei.

A UFWD report of the meeting with Chau describes the Australian billionaire welcoming "district party standing committee member and UFWD head Xie Wei" as he led a UFWD delegation visiting the headquarters of Chau's business, the Kingold Group, a diversified property development company. Also in attendance was "UFWD deputy head and Taiwan affairs office head Xue Jianbin."

"Kingold Group Chairman and well-known Australian Chinese leader Dr Chau Chak Wing welcomed the party committee delegation's arrival. Both sides entered an intimate discussion, with Dr Chau introducing the current situation of his business's growth and his own situation in promoting China-Australia cultural exchange and trade cooperation to Xie's delegation."

In 2014, a United Front Work Department provincial publication published an article lauding Chau's philanthropy under the website banner "Shantou United Front".

Chau has also previously served on the committee of a Sydney United Front affiliate organisation, the Australian Council for the Promotion of the Peaceful Reunification of China. The body is dedicated to advocating for Beijing's territorial claims, with a focus on Taiwan.

The Fairfax Media and Four Corners' investigation into the Chinese Communist Party's attempts to influence Australian institutions sparked significant debate. The government announced an inquiry into the adequacy of Australia's intelligence agency laws, Bill Shorten called for the issue to be referred to a joint parliamentary committee, and the Coalition and Labor traded barbs in parliament over the links between senior politicians and various donors.

China's Ambassador to Australia Cheng Jingye attacked the reporting that sparked the fall-out, likening it to a re-heated plate of stale fried rice.

Chau, an Australian citizen, not only gave an interview to The Australian (he declined earlier interview requests from Fairfax Media and Four Corners and did not answer a detailed list of questions) but has launched legal action against Fairfax Media and the ABC. Chau claims the coverage has falsely inferred he has betrayed Australia to further Beijing's interests and the work of the organisation he claims to know nothing about the UFWD.

Chau did not respond to questions about why he has disavowed knowledge of the UFWD or why he has also claimed to have "never been a member of an advisory group called the People's Political Consultative Conference", a body managed by the United Front Work Department. A Chinese government website describes Chau as a past member of a CPPCC in Tianhe.

A hint about Chau's attitude towards the media may lie in the fact that he owns a Guangdong newspaper, the New Express, in a country where the press is vetted by propaganda authorities.

The 2007 diplomatic cable asserts that Chau "is thought to have used his considerable connections to take over" the paper, which Consul General Goldberg describes as affiliated with the provincial Communist Party. This was "an unusual transaction given government sensitivity to media control in China." It's a sensitivity Chau appears adept at managing.

In a rare interview about the New Express in 2009, Chau said that "the Chinese government has found this newspaper very commendable because we never have any negative reporting."

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Wikileaked: Billionaire Australian donor's Beijing links detailed in 'sensitive' diplomatic cable - The Sydney Morning Herald

This article first appeared on the American Enterprise Institute site.

Its been almost 70 years since English novelist Eric Arthur Blair, writing under the pseudonym George Orwell, penned 1984, his famous dystopian novel which depicted life in Oceania, a state in perpetual war with omnipresent government surveillance, strict state control of the media, and cynical government manipulation of the populace.

The state prosecutes thought crime and independent thinking. The Inner Party strictly controls policy, even as members of the Outer Party fill other bureaucratic slots in order to keep the state functioning. Historical revisionism is rife and alliances shift rapidly.

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After years of war against Eurasia, Oceanias policy suddenly switches, hence the declarative statement, Oceania was at war with Eastasia: Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia, no matter the reality of previous years.

Orwell wrote his masterpiece in the wake of World War II and against the backdrop of the expansion of communism throughout Eastern Europe and its attempts to make inroads into Western Europe.

Photographs of Eric Blair, whose pen name was George Orwell, from his Metropolitan Police file, c.1940. The National Archives UK

The reason 1984 remains so relevant today, however, is that uncomfortable takes on fake news and government disdain for individual liberty remain too real in too many places. After President Donald Trumps inauguration, 1984 shot up the rankings on Amazon, leading the publisher to print an additional 70,000 copies.

Whatever disdain people might have for Trump and his unwillingness to confront even the reality of his past statements and positions, the United States is not Oceania and any suggestion otherwise is an exaggeration. The judiciary is independent and the media free. What countries then come closest to the Oceania of Orwells creation?

North Korea is, of course, the most totalitarian country on earth. Foreign media consumption is not allowed. Children are indoctrinated from birth, if not from North Korean schools then by their own families who fear the consequence of any question or remark, however innocent, that could contradict or somehow cross the Dear Leaders line.

Dissidence, real or suspected, will lead to punishment not only for the individual but for generations of his or her family. Heroes one day transform into despicable human scum.

Turkmenistan, at least under the late leader Turkmenbashi, came close. He named days and months after himself and his family, and constructed a gold statue that rotated with the sun.

But, while Turkmenbashi sought absolute obedience, his regime was more authoritarian than totalitarian. Eritrea, too, is authoritarian in the extreme especially with regard to press freedom and free expression but is not organized enough to be truly totalitarian.

If Orwell were alive today, the country which might best conform to 1984 might well be Turkey. The issue isnt simply President Recep Tayyip Erdogans corruption or authoritarianism. In that, he is really no different from Russian President Vladimir Putin or Venezuelan dictator Nicols Maduro.

Rather, it is how Erdogan has seized control of the media in order to impose narratives that change as rapidly as Oceanias wars against Eastasia and Eurasia. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was Erdogans best-friend, for example, until he wasnt.

But woe to any Turk that points out how Erdogan cultivated Assad and even vacationed with him. Turkeys relationship with Russia is enough to give any observer whiplash, moving from cautious trade partners to sanctions and military bluster to the tightest of allies over the course of a year.

The same has become especially apparent in the aftermath of the July 15, 2016 abortive coup, which Erdogan blames on friend-turned-rival Fethullah Glen, a US-based theologian.

After the Erdogan-Glen dispute about finances and corruption spilled into the open in 2013, the Erdogan-controlled Turkish press turned on a dime, ascribing ever-more outlandish conspiracies to a man with whom they were infatuated just months before.

Remember, just a few years earlier, Turkish police were seeking the author and all copies of an unpublished manuscript critical of Glen. While the book was unpublished and therefore no libel had occurred Erdogan and Turkeys police sought to prosecute the case because, at the time, to think negatively about Glen or his followers was intolerable.

But that was then and this is now. Erdogan and his press today ascribe a name the Fethullahist Terror Organization to his organization and hundreds of thousands of his followers and demand the Turkish press pick up the narrative.

The state propels the same accusations they once sought to suppress. In effect, Erdogan has always been at war with Eastasia. Likewise, even though Erdogans coup-night narrative is full of holes, Turkish journalists and academics are not allowed to ask questions about the inconsistencies.

The scariest part of Turkeys descent into Orwellianism is how many people outside Turkey have been willing to play along. Some American institutions seem to find little wrong in Erdogans theories, or they self-censor because they seek donations from firms Erdogan or his family members control.

Individual analysts at best remain silent and at worst affirm Erdogans theories in the press because they maintain energy sector or consulting contracts and prefer not to antagonize the Turkish president, whatever their private thoughts might be. Turkish-born analysts equivocate because they worry that Erdogan might retaliate against their families.

Some Western journalists self-censor to maintain access, and even Freedom House appears at best to lack moral clarity and at worst side with access over censorship.

What has happened in Turkey is tragic. The issue is no longer simply freedom of speech but rather freedom of thought. As tens of thousands are jailed and more than 100,000 fired, even more have become non-persons, no longer entitled to jobs, school, legal representation, or government benefits all because of suspicions about what they think.

Meanwhile, those who want to get ahead or even merely survive must parrot Erdogans lines, no matter how contradictory they might have been to those the president muttered only weeks or months before. Time in Turkey is running backwards, and the country increasingly seems mired in 1984.

Michael Rubin is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. A former Pentagon official, his major research areas are the Middle East, Turkey, Iran and diplomacy.

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Which Country Today Is Most Like Orwell's 1984 Authoritarian Nightmare? - Newsweek