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On November 8th, I tweeted, If the media thought that the relationship with#donaldtrumpwashostileduring the campaign...its going to be like that on steroids in the White House.

In the first month of the Donald TrumpDonald TrumpHow Democrats can rebuild a winning, multiracial coalition The Green Movement Is our planets last best hope Poll: Majority of Americans fear US will become involved in another major war MORE presidency, the president and his top advisors have told the media to keep its mouth shut, dubbed it the opposition party, and characterized it as fake news.

In short, everything is going exactly to script.

Anybody who was delusional enough to believe that upon assuming the presidency, Trump would somehow mature, evolve and adapt, can now see how laughably off base that pipe dream really was.

This of course is all by design.

Trump and his chief strategist Steve Bannon believe that they are at their best when they have someone to fight and when everyone else around them is in chaos.

In the campaign, they had the luxury of 16 other Republican primary candidates to play-off of. In the general election, they had both the legacy of President Barack ObamaBarack ObamaHow Democrats can rebuild a winning, multiracial coalition Howard Dean endorses Buttigieg in DNC race Americans should get used to pop culture blending with politics MORE and Secretary Hillary ClintonHillary Rodham ClintonFederal judge denies watchdog's request to disclose State Dept. records on Clintons emails How Democrats can rebuild a winning, multiracial coalition Howard Dean endorses Buttigieg in DNC race MORE to serve as their foils.

Now they need another boogeyman to effectively run against and the media is the perfect target.

This serves a dual purpose.

Whatever failings they have theyll convince their base of supporters that the media is manipulating the story with alternative facts and point them to platforms they control that show the president in a distortedly positive light.

At the same time, as media outlets begin to beef-up investigative units, Trumps cronies will actively try totear down all external pillars of accountabilityto insulate the President and control the flow of information that reaches him.

so essentially @POTUS is upset that the truth came out and #flynn got caught lying and its really unfair #fakemedia exposed him

Should the Washington Post investigative unit publish a story they dont like, Bannon and friends will march into the Oval Office and tell the president, well of course they wrote that, theyre the opposition, theyre the enemy, dont listen to them, listen to us.

Should the Bureau of Labor Statistics have unemployment and job numbers that reflect poorly on the Trump Administration, Trumps cadre of advisors will tell him the government bureaucrats are using fuzzy math and order them to submit all reports to the White House for review and approval, before releasing publicly.

Its a way to inoculate themselves from being held accountableby the president and also to continue to narrow who the president listens to and where he gets his information.

For all of the talk about alternative facts, the Trump White House is creating its own alternate reality.

The White House believes they are in the position of strength and can do whatever they want. They dont need to answer any questions from anyone. They can and will stack the deck of every public engagement with favorable reporters and avoid being held accountable.

They are banking on the idea that whether you like them or hate them, whether they call you names and question your motives, whether they straight up lie to you, that the media will cover a Trump tweet with mass saturation.

Think about it. The very people who are so critical of the media are also hungry, thirsty and obsessed for their approval, acceptance and their coverage.

The worst thing you could do in the Trump-Bannon lexicon is to not talk about them at all.

Obviously, thats not practical, but thats how theyre playing it.

Whether the media accepts it or not, they are in a war.

#WH strategy is to not respond to reporters before a story is published so they can say it's false after it runs and call it media bias

Historically, political leaders in power who have this kind of open contempt for the free press end up utilizing extreme means to try and silence/suppress it.

Imagine if the next time the president refuses to answer a straightforward question or attacks a media outlet at a press conference, if every reporter after that, asks the same question or defers their time to the reporter who was attacked.

Imagine if the next time the president tweets something, rather than saturating the airwaves with panel after panel talking about it, an anchor simply reads it once and nothing else is said about it ever again.

Imagine if the next time the president uses the free press as props to hold another Trump infomercial, the press doesnt break in live and instead runs news stories about real people spotlighting how policies in Washington are impacting them on a day-to-day level.

I have always believed that the medias true power lies in its ability to reach and shape public perception. One of the fundamental tenets that our nation was built upon is the ability to have a free and interactive press that can tell truth to power and fight for answers to questions that need to be asked on behalf of the American people.

I dont believe that the media was ever looking for this fight, but like it or not, they are now in it and they are losing. Good, bad, ugly, if the conversation is all about Donald Trump, Team Trump believes they are winning.

Maybe part of the solution is to spend less time talking Trump and more time spotlighting the human cost of Trumps policies.

@KurtBardella is a media consultant in Washington D.C. that has represented Breitbart News, the Daily Caller, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), the House Oversight and Reform Committee and Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine)

The views expressed by contributors are their own and are not the views of The Hill

Excerpt from:
Yes, it's war: How the media should fight back against Trump - The Hill (blog)

DES MOINES -- Iowa would be the latest state to adopt a stand-your-ground law if a proposal for revisions in gun regulations filed this week comes to pass.

The self-defense measure introduced in the Iowa House is part of a study bill that would bring sweeping changes to gun laws in the state.

Under House Study Bill 133, introduced Monday by Rep. Matt Windschitl, R-Missouri Valley, other provisions include removing the renewal requirement for permits to carry firearms and allowing minors of any age to handle a handgun in the presence of a parent or guardian.

Its got a lot of concepts in it that are trying to, I think, achieve the right balance, said Rep. Chip Baltimore, R-Boone, chairman of the Judiciary Committee that will hear the bill.

An Iowa law known as the castle doctrine currently protects the use of deadly force when a person acts in self-defense in his or her home, business or car. HSB 133 allows for the use of deadly force for self-defense anywhere a gun owner can lawfully carry. The bill does not require a person to retreat from a threat or call police before using deadly force. About half the states have some version of a stand-your-ground law.

Cedar County Sheriff Warren Wethington said he supports the provision, saying retreating is not always an option.

Even if there is a stand-your-ground law, you still have to be able to articulate why someone was going to use deadly force or cause serious injury to you or a loved one, he said.

Johnson County Sheriff Lonny Pulkrabek, however, doesnt feel the current law needs changing when it comes to reasonable force.

What Im concerned about with stand your ground is that it will make it much easier for someone to take someones life and simply say, I felt threatened, he said.

The issue of stand your ground gained national prominence after the 2012 fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin, 17, at the hands of neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman, then 28, in Florida.

Zimmermans defense waived an immunity hearing on using the law and instead went to trial arguing self-defense. Although defense attorneys did not argue stand your ground at trial, standard jury instructions in homicide cases in the state include provisions of the law. A jury acquitted him of second-degree murder in July 2013.

Jeremy Brigham, executive director of Iowans for Gun Safety, said HSB 133 would considerably weaken Iowas gun laws based on their contribution to decreasing gun-related deaths and injuries. He said stand your ground opens up a can of worms.

How are you going to know if youre really defending yourself or if youre taking the initiative if you think youre being attacked? Brigham asked.

The proposed bill also would do away with a requirement those with permits to carry weapons have to renew the permission every five years. Instead, the permit would be good for the life of the holder.

Pulkrabek and Linn County Sheriff Brian Gardner said the renewal process allows sheriffs offices to review permits to ensure something hasnt changed over the five years since the permit was issued that could potentially disqualify the holder from possessing the permit such as a change in mental health or a series of drug and alcohol-related offenses.

Under the bill, new applicants also would be allowed to complete online training courses to demonstrate knowledge of firearm safety. Pulkrabek, however, said someone who carries a permit but has never handled a weapon could be a safety threat. Wethington agrees hands-on training is vital.

I do not support internet online training, Wethington said, who said the permit classes he runs include four hours of class time and four hours of range time. You have time to take people that dont really have the skill set and make sure theyre safe before you put your name on (the permit). Not only is there the issue of public safety, but its just like driving a car you need to be proficient about what you do.

If adopted, the bill would remove age requirements for minors handling handguns under the supervision of a parent or guardian. Currently, Iowa law requires a minor be at least 14 to handle a handgun.

Aaron Dorr, executive director of Iowa Gun Owners, said thats an arbitrary age limit.

Quite frankly, its absurd, he said. We want those kids to safely be taught to use a firearm. No one can do that better than a parent.

Brigham, however, questions the logic.

Kids dont understand the consequences of their actions, he said. They can handle rifles as it is, but handguns? Really? Thats not a hunting instrument.

Other provisions include removing a penalty for carrying a weapon while under the influence if someone is in his or her own home or business; keeping information on people who possess weapon permits confidential; allowing carrying firearms on snowmobiles and ATVs on property that doesnt belong to the carrier; and legalizing short-barreled rifles and shotguns.

The bill would establish state control over firearms, essentially preventing cities and counties from enacting their own regulations.

Baltimore said he believes the bill has the votes to make it through the legislative funnel, but concedes it could see some changes before it goes to the House.

Im not going to predict what the bill looks like when it gets to the floor, he said.

Link:
Gun bill seeks 'stand-your-ground' law - Waterloo Cedar Falls Courier

Seattle playwright, actor, and dancer Kamaria Hallums-Harris didn't know what she was going to write for her senior thesis project at Cornish College of the Arts. But when George Zimmerman shot and killed Trayvon Martin, her mission clarified.

As the Zimmerman case unfolded on the news, she began to wonder whether black women were being killed by police as often and for the same reasons that black men were. Her queries led her to the history of lynching.

She found the story of Mary Turner, who in 1918 was hanged by her ankles, set on fire, and riddled with bullets. Seeing that Turner was eight months pregnant at the time, a member of the white mob that strung her up cut the unborn baby from her womb and stomped on it. She also found the story of Laura Nelson, who was raped and hanged from a bridge. The baby she was carrying reportedly survived the murder.

Hallums-Harris weaves such stories into Waning, a coming-of-age drama about a 17-year-old black girl named Luna (Danela Butler). Luna struggles with anxiety. As she begins to reckon with a burgeoning queer identity, she also begins to discover the many horrifying acts of violence against black people in the United States. In the midst of that psychological thunderstorm, she unexpectedly becomes pregnant.

Over the course of the play's brief 50 minutes, Hallums-Harris alternates quiet bedroom scenes with extended transitions that pulse with emotional intensity and very active metaphors. There's a scene where a nameless man (Benjamin Symons, who otherwise plays Luna's boyfriend, Ravi) reads the brutal facts of Mary Turner's lynching while Luna moans in the ecstasy of her first queer experience, as if pleasure can't be experienced without acknowledging the history of pain that precedes it.

In another moment, as Luna meditates on her pregnancy, a remixed version of Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit" pipes in through the speakers overhead. The striking juxtaposition recalls a biographical detail from Hallums-Harris's own life.

While she was writing Waning, Hallums-Harris, like her main character, found herself unexpectedly pregnant. "It felt like the modern-day equivalent of lynchings to me, that I wanted to keep this child and was not set up to do so," she says. Her due date was her graduation day, and she says she was performing in two shows, working three jobs, and trying to keep her grades up all at the same time. "I did not have the resources. I did not have the funds, so I wrote that into Waning," she says.

Not that it didn't take a toll. Waning, which was co-produced with Earth Pearl Collective, is a heavy show, and the production takes unorthodox steps to prepare people for it: On Tuesday nights, the crew will lead audiences through a self-care breathing ritual involving lavender packets, intended to help them through the play's heavy themes. (Also, white audience members are encouraged to bring a friend of color.)

Hallums-Harris says moments where the past seems to rhyme with the present interest her the mostthat interest is reflected both in the script and in the show's music and movement. Jazz from the Robert Glasper Trio mixes with hiphop from Kanye West and Kendrick Lamar. A character named Leuanna (played Hallums-Harris), a sort of dancing fairy godmother whose life is intertwined with Luna's, incorporates into her movement gestures from hiphop, ballet, and modern dance.

While Hallums-Harris draws strength and creative energy from her research and from her particular swirl of contemporary and historical aesthetics, the implications of all of it aren't lost on her. That is, if the present looks a lot like the past, then the future doesn't look too good. This idea concretized for her during the writing process, and she finds it depressing.

"But I couldn't write anything else" she says. "I just needed to figure it out."

Before graduating from Cornish with a degree in original works in 2014, Hallums-Harris attended South Carolina Governor's School for the Arts & Humanities (the alma mater of actors such as Nicole Beharie and Danielle Brooks). Since she's been in town, she's acted in shows at Annex and Seattle Immersive Theatre, and she just landed the role of Barbara in Intiman's upcoming production of Robert O'Hara's Barbecue.

In the meantime, despite the heavy emotional toll of writing Waning, she'll be working on another time-bending play called Mitochondrial Eve, in which Hallums-Harris imagines the life of humanity's common matrilineal ancestor in different scenarios throughout time, from The Beginning right on up to the present day. Right now, she says, the first scene involves Nat Turner's wife having an affair with Kurt Vonnegut.

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The Long Shadow of Lynching in 2017 - TheStranger.com

Des Moines Public Schools board members sported Black Lives Matter shirts and their Tuesday meeting.(Photo: Molly Longman/The Register)Buy Photo

It was business as usual at the weekly Des Moines Public Schools board meeting at Des Moines Central Campus High Schoolon Tuesday evening.

But one thing was different six ofDes Moines School Board's seven members were sporting black T-shirts that read "Black Lives Matter" in thick, white lettering.

There was no mention of the shirts duringthe formal part of the meetingas board members and Superintendent Thomas Ahart, who did not wear a Black Lives Matter T-shirt,discussedissues such as Des Moines Central Academy upgrades andearly literacy programs.

The shirts spoke for themselves.

Board member Dionna Langford spearheadedDMPS'Black Lives Matter initiative, selling the shirts for $10 and donating 50 percent of the proceeds to two Des Moines organizations that work to improve the welfare of Des Moines' black community:Brother 2Brother, which partners young men of color withmentors, andInvesting in MyFuture,which pushes black students to pursue higher education.

Langford said $655 were raised for the organizations after selling 131 locally printedshirts.

Black Lives Matteris an international movement, foundedby three black women in 2013 after the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the Florida shooting of black teen Trayvon Martin.

At the meeting, Langford explained why the school board felt it was important to stand in solidarity with their black students and community.

"The statement we want to make today as a board is that we care about our black students," Langford said. "We care about their families and we care about our black workforce While weve seen progress throughout the years, our education system is still rife with inequities and our poor, brown, and, yes, black children often pay the price."

According tostatistics from the Iowa Department of Education, in the 2014-2015 school year,the African-American dropout rate in Iowa is over double the rate of white students. Black students were the only group with a graduation rate of under 80 percent, the statistics show.

Des Moines Public Schools states on its website that 18.8 percent of its population is black.

Black Lives Matter T-shirts were waiting for board members on their seats at the Tuesday meeting.(Photo: Molly Longman/The Register)

"We are still vigorously working to close the achievement gap between our poor and our black students of color," Langford said. "As a school district, it is our responsibility to ensure every single child as my grandma would say, whetheryoure black, brown, white, orange or purple graduates with the knowledge they need to be successful at the next stage of their lives."

Both Langford and school board vice chair Cindy Elsbernd said they'd received negative feedback from members of the community after they announced they'd be wearing the Black Lives Matter shirts at Tuesday's meeting.

"I've been asked why I would support the violent Black Lives Matter group," Elsbernd said. "I don't. In fact, I don't support violence at all neither does Black Lives Matter Black students, I see you. I've learned from you. Your successful education is important to me. You matter."

Board chairTeree Caldwell-Johnson assured attendees at the end of the meeting that the school board supports students of all walks of life.

"I hope that the people in our community understand that we support all of our children," Caldwell-Johnson said."Tonight we're focusing on a particular cohort, but we supportand want to educate all of our children and, again, not only do black minds matter and black lives matter, all children matter in this district."

Board member Rob Barron, who was the only board member who didn't don a Black Lives Matter shirt, explained that his clothing choice was "not for any lack of solidarity or belief in the movement, but purely based on an outvoted belief of not wearing a T-shirt at a board meeting and a belief in professionalism."

Barron draped his Black Lives Matter shirt over his desk so attendees could read it during the meeting.

Debbie Griffin, a pastor at Des Moines urban ministryDowntown Disciples, attended the board meeting wearing a Black Lives Matter shirt and a clerical collar.

I wore this shirt to stand in solidarity, not only with the school board that's supporting black students, but in solidarity with black students and my black neighbors," Griffin said. "It's a way for me to express my lovefor my neighbor and my concern for their equality, justice, dignity and honor."

During the meeting, Langford left attendees with a statement about why the movement was important to her.

"As an alum of the Des Moines public school system, I could share my own stories of moments where I was made to feel as an other and how that impacted my thoughts about my ability to succeed in the classroom. And if you talk to many other black students, I would not be surprised if you would hear similar stories," Langford said. "Every single one of our student's lives matter within the Des Moines public school district and that includes black children."

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DM School Board members sport 'Black Lives Matter' shirts - DesMoinesRegister.com

(Image: Screenshot by Tas Bindi/ZDNet)

There are more than 18 million open datasets available, but they're often difficult to find, difficult to understand, and difficult to translate into something of value, according to Austin, Texas-based startup Data.World.

As an active participant in the open data movement, Data.World seeks to democratise the vast treasure trove of accumulated data scattered across online and offline environments.

On Tuesday, the startup, which operates as a public benefit corporation with a legal obligation to create value for society, announced that it raised $18.7 million in a Series B funding round led by Pat Ryan's family investment group. The latest round brings the total amount raised by Data.World to $32.7 million.

Founded by CEO Brett Hurt, CTO Bryon Jacob, COO Matt Laessig, and CPO Jon Loyens, Data.World can be described as one of many things: A social network, a discovery tool, a collaboration platform, or a data repository.

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By combining linked datasets with social networking features, Data.World strives to be the place where users -- whether they're data scientists or data enthusiasts, solo entrepreneurs or multinational organisations -- come to discover, discuss, and disseminate datasets, as well as collaborate on data projects to solve academic, commercial, and societal problems.

Data.World links datasets together using semantic technology, which gives concepts within datasets an independent existence, allowing people and machines to work with data without needing to learn everything about it first. The datasets are available in both public and private configurations.

Instead of just presenting .CSV files of raw data, users can visualise the data by choosing from a range of charts. By clicking the information icon, users can also get a quick overview of the datasets, including information such as the number of distinct and missing values, as well as most common and least common values.

Loyens told ZDNet that Data.World was designed to capture, store, and link all the activity -- including discussions and queries -- that take place around the datasets published on the platform.

"If you're working in a company and you're working on a data project, it's really hard to collaborate because you lose a lot of context, you lose a lot of what's been done over time with the data ... they get lost in emails, in old wikis," Loyens said.

"Everything you see is available as APIs ... As a researcher or data analyst, if you put together a really great dataset and you want to make that available to an application developer, you can just drag it and drop it in Data.World and instantly have these query end points where people can actually start creating apps against it."

Since its launch in July 2016, the startup has experienced "phenomenal" traction, according to Hurt, who sold one of his previous companies Coremetrics to IBM in 2010. He told ZDNet that Data.World's traction mirrors the global momentum around open data.

"We had such a great receptivity that it allowed us to get that funding much earlier than I ever anticipated. We now have the runway to really build out this business," Hurt said.

"We really haven't made much of a dent in that first amount, but we wanted to make sure that, with the ambition we have and the growth we're experiencing, we have enough capital available to really do the concept justice," Loyens added.

"We're going to be making sure we get into the right communities and build the features that the community really needs to thrive and collaborate on Data.World."

In addition to funding, Data.World has also attracted partners such as the National Science Foundation, Census Bureau, Anti-Defamation League, US Commerce Department National Technical Information Service, and the Pentagon.

Datasets published on the platform vary widely -- there's data on sports, education, poverty, national security, housing, mental health, and terrorism.

"What's really more important than the debt or the big partnerships or the people that we're working with are the communities that are developing in Data.World," Loyens noted.

Formed in December 2016, Data For Democracy is one of the earliest communities to use Data.World. In a few months, the group has grown to more than 800 data scientists and subject matter experts -- all working to shed light on and bring greater transparency to the democratic process and to government programs, according to Data.World. The group works with data on crime, drug spending, and the presidential election.

Another notable user is data journalist Carl V Lewis who, shortly after the US travel ban was announced, published a dataset around the citizenship status of all perpetrators of terrorist attacks against the US and Americans abroad since 2001. Another user, Marc Santolini, created a visualisation of that dataset, which highlighted the discrepancy between perception and facts.

"Data.World can quickly become the source of truth. People shared that visualisation because they knew it's backed up by real data. They can actually go look at the data. Maybe they themselves are not data scientists, but they know that data scientists are always on the platform running queries," Hurt said.

Ian Greenleigh, head of marketing at Data.World, told ZDNet that as Data.World grows, data will be brought up in every conversation.

"We feel like if data is a source of truth, and if we can host that data on the platform, then a new kind of phenomenon will occur where data will be brought up in every conversation when there are differences of opinion. They'll hopefully resolve some of those differences," Greenleigh said.

He added that the availability of data is the first step, and that Data.World wants to take the open data movement to the next level.

"What we are trying to add to that mix is a collaborative work environment and the social signals you need to decide whether that's the right data for you, whether the originator is respected in the community, whether they have credibility, whether the analysis makes sense, because you're able to dig in and see how the person got there," Greenleigh said.

The startup's end game is "a platform that accelerates research, informs policy, and helps us all combat fake news and 'reality check' the facts around us".

Data.World's founders are cognisant of the privacy and security challenges around data and do not claim to have all the answers. Like other social networks, Data.World has terms of service and rules that community members are required to abide by.

For example, Data.World prohibits users from uploading data that is not their own, or contains personally identifiable information, to the open side of the platform. If any violations come to light, Data.World's terms of service allow it to terminate a user's access to their account and their ability to post. It can also remove files from the site at its discretion.

"For the most part, our community is pretty good at policing itself. But you can't rely on that entirely," Loyens said. "There's the fat finger effect where somebody accidentally clicks the 'public' button. You can put as many warnings in front of them as you want, but sometimes things get out.

"We believe in full auditability, so when things like that happen, you know how it happened, why it happened, and how to correct it. This is really important to us from a design principle standpoint, from a technology standpoint. It's just as easy to make [the data] private again. We provide all the right access control measures to get the data back."

Data.World has not been monetised at scale, though the founders admitted that one undisclosed organisation has insisted on becoming a paid user.

Generally, the startup's monetisation model will revolve around enterprise use. For example, there will be enterprise-friendly features such as single sign-on and administrative controls that organisations will be required to pay for. Also, organisations that want to combine public and private datasets will be required to pay a nominal fee.

"Just like with GitHub, a lot of individual developers started using it on open source projects or personal passion projects and brought in the organisation and the organisations needed to adapt to that. We already have organisations reaching out and asking for those enterprise features, so we're trying to figure out how to navigate those worlds," Loyens said.

Data.World's users are predominantly from the US, the UK, Canada, and Australia, with a growing number of users coming from India.

Read more here:
Social network for data scientists Data.World raises $18.7m - ZDNet