The CIA and Zero Dark Thirty

I did not see the film Zero Dark Thirty (2012) about the mission that resulted in the killing of Osama bin Laden in 2011, an action that many of president Obama’s supporters hailed as the finest moment of his presidency, showing his toughness in the face of Republican charges that Democrats are wimps. In fact, in the 2012 election, vice president Joe Biden adopted the slogan that thanks to president Obama, “General Motors is alive and Osama bin Laden is dead.”
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How to identify viral hoaxes

The internet is great for quickly spreading news all over the world. Unfortunately, it also makes it possible to spread false stories and I too have been burned by taking seriously stories that later turn out to be hoaxes. But how does one tell truth from fiction? One option is to simply wait. The more widespread a story becomes, the more likely it is that someone will investigate it and issue a debunking if warranted. But if you do feel the need to act on the story quickly, Pete Brown, a research fellow at the University of Oxford, supplies six ways for you to investigate it yourself.
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The Thinking Housewife goes bonkers

Regular readers know that from time to time I wander over to the website known as The Thinking Housewife, a kind of online salon where hostess Laura Wood presides over a Downton Abbeyish genteel world in which the atmosphere suggests people daintily eating biscuits and drinking tea out of fine china, all the while politely discussing how hard it is to get good help these days and how these ghastly foreigners are ruining the country. All the usual tropes of conservative right-wing ideology are lauded, feminism and homosexuality and socialism are seen as horrible evils, and traditional Catholicism is venerated to such an extent that pope Francis is seen a subversive, Commie, usurper anti-pope who should be rejected. He is invariably referred to with ironic quote marks as “pope” Francis or by his street name Jorge Mario Bergoglio.
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