jacob news

If I were to ask you what you thought I was going to write about this week, I guarantee you would say something along the lines of, �The controversy over the NFL and the debate over the protests during the national anthem.�             Well you would be wrong. I will not talk about that issue tonight because everybody and I mean EVERYBODY is talking about it. Every influential figure and anybody with a platform has given their opinion about it. I decided that it would be unoriginal to add to that circus.             However, before I get into tonight�s main subject, I�m going to talk about it. It�s a subject that I have been following and I could easily write a lengthy blog about. I�ll try to keep it short. Fox News had me fuming as I analyzed their coverage of the event. They effectively twisted the purpose of the protests and painted a picture that these athletes are anti-Amer...

In my first political awakening, I became an ardent pro-capitalist libertarian. There were some anti-capitalists to debate around my university and on the internet, but the average quality of their arguments were so poor that engaging with these folks deepened my convictions instead of challenging them. But over the years I have seen first hand some of the failures of capitalism. Burning Man and its ethos of public contribution was a major turning point in my attitude towards capitalism, illustrating the great good that can be created outside of formal exchange relationships. Now I see that there are plenty of circumstances where free markets fail to create an optimal outcome, either by failing to properly incentivize things that we value, or by failing to disincentivize bad behavior. Market capitalism alone is not a complete recipe for growing a good society. Today the world still suffers from low quality anti-capitalists. To protest capitalism, they break shop windows, burn cars, blo...

Before we get into tonight�s blog, I just had a random thought. Info Wars and Alex Jones are dangerous. I dived into their YouTube channel today to see what they had been up to and if Jones had ranted recently (I love his rants. Truly a national treasure.). I was quickly reminded of the active brainwashing occurring on the �alternative news network� and how it so effortlessly lies and espouses harmful rhetoric. It wouldn�t be a big deal except for the fact that the network has millions of followers and faithful listeners. This normalization of completely false and ridiculous claims is something that I warned about in my column in the Summerville Journal Scene back in December. The battle between fact and fiction is currently being controlled by fiction as facts retreat and desperately try to regroup. The President and figures like Alex Jones have effectively stripped outlets like CNN and MSNBC of all credibility after calling them �fake news� for years. They have allowed people to simp...

If you watched CNN, MSNBC, or the Weather Channel while Hurricane Irma went on a rampage in the southeast, it appeared that these media outlets were actively trying to kill their reporters. I spent a few hours on Sunday watching Chris Cuomo from CNN who was in Naples while the eye wall passed by. Was it entertaining? Yes. Was it informative? Yes. Was it safe? No. Did it boost CNN�s ratings? Most certainly. Was this whole thing just for ratings? Probably.             An ABC reporter in Miami tied himself to a balcony during the height of the storm. An MSNBC reporter had to avoid being hit by falling branches while on camera. A cameraman from The Weather Channel fell over because of the wind in Miami and his camera went flying.             The journalists justified their actions by claiming that they were raising awareness to the dangers of hurricanes and were trying to dissuade p...

If you have been checking Facebook recently and you have a bunch of friends from South Carolina, it would appear as if we are all going to die because of Hurricane Irma. Everybody is freaking out. A lot of clickbait articles and fake models of the storm have come out and have invaded my newsfeed causing me to become frustrated.             I was most annoyed by the posts claiming that all of the catastrophic events and anomalies of the past month are evidence that God is coming to �save us.� When in reality, the extremities of this hurricane season and the wildfires out west are the effects of climate change, not the foreshadowing of the coming of God. The water is warmer than usual in the Caribbean which helps fuel hurricanes. California is experiencing their hottest summer ever this year which has effects on the magnitude of the wildfires in that region. Maybe if we stopped ignoring the effects of climate change so much, we could ...