I’m not a Twit Tweeter, so I can’t help, but commentor Currants linked to Matt Taibbi’s latest effort to annoy the Vampire Squids:
… To get the word out about Wall Street’s anti-reform push and stiffen spines in congress, we’re trying out Thunderclap, a cool new technology that lets groups of people tweet a single message together at the same time, breaking through the din and reaching a potentially massive audience. (Learn more here.) But we need your help!
Here’s how it works: Go here and click to “join” Matt Taibbi’s Thunderclap. On June 6 at 12 pm, together with hundreds of other Twitter users, you will automatically tweet a message –”.@senjohnsonsd @stabenowpress Hear our voices and stop the rollback of Dodd-Frank http://thndr.it/JBZD9Z” – to Sen. Tim Johnson of South Dakota, the chairman of the Senate banking committee and Sen. Debbie Stabenow, chair of the Agriculture Committee, which has jurisdiction over financial derivatives.
We need 500 people to join the Thunderclap by June 6 or the tweet won’t be sent, so please join today and help Matt stand up to the Wall Street lobbyists.
Anybody got more information they can share — beyond the inevitable “Matt Taibbi is an evil loudmouth who doesn’t understand how finance works” comments?
MikeJ
I don’t think he;s evil, just clueless and uninterested in the truth value of his statements.
EvolutionaryDesign
I joined up. Just happened to have spun up a tweeter myself. It’s a good message. Why not help try and make an impact? I know it’s slacktivism, but it seems to be slightly more effective than complaining on blogs (note I used “slightly”).
Nash
I went to do so, only to be informed the App would be given the authorization to alter my profile and see who I was following.
Who the FUCK wrote such an intrusive piece of garbage for crowdsourcing?!
Gwiwer
@Nash:
You’re surprised that an app which needs access to your Twitter account to do what it does is asking you for access to your Twitter account?
EvolutionaryDesign
@Nash: Facebook?
middlewest
I think they finally invented something less useful than an internet petition. Impressive.
J. Michael Neal
When I get the sense that you actually want a more informative response, I’ll be happy to share it.
burnspbesq
I wasn’t going there. Taibbi dhas at least a rudimentary understanding of how capital markets work. However, he doesn’t understand (or disingenuously refuses to acknowledge) that not everything unconscionable is a crime, and he clearly has no appreciation for the difficulty of putting together successful white-collar prosecutions.
And his writing style? I knew Hunter Thompson, sir, and you’re no Hunter Thompson.
Culture of Truth
Is there a middle ground between ‘evil’ and ‘just not a huge fan?’
burnspbesq
@Culture of Truth:
How about “well-meaning but unhelpful?”
Chad
joined simply cause I like the name Thunderclap
some guy
How about “well-meaning but unhelpful?”
In another atrocity the bodies of 13 men were found near Deir al-Zor. The men had their hands bound and some appeared to have been shot in the head. It was not clear whether this was linked to Syrian state media reports of an “armed terrorist group” blowing up a nearby oil pipeline. General Robert Mood, head of the UN monitors, called it an “appalling and inexcusable act”. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights meanwhile reported 39 further deaths in attacks across Syria on Wednesday, including 15 government soldiers.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/may/30/moscow-pledges-block-intervention-syria
“Today there is a need for jihad in Syria, a jihad for righteousness. It is a religious duty to help our Muslim brothers in Syria,” he says, his portly frame sitting on the edge of a narrow bed. In his late 40s and sporting a thick beard and wearing a black turban, Khaled is one of an estimated 300 Lebanese from the Bekaa Valley who have joined the revolt against the Assad regime. Most of the volunteers have joined regular FSA brigades, but, according to Lebanese militants allied to the FSA, there is even one exclusively Lebanese armed unit numbering between 20 to 30 men who operate between the border and the Syrian town of Qusayr.
The militants say that other Arab nationals also are fighting alongside Syrian rebels, including citizens from Tunisia, Algeria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. The presence of non-Syrian Arab militants underlines how the steadily worsening violence and sectarian nature of the conflict is turning Syria into a new theater of jihad.
Read more: http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Politics/2012/May-30/175072-lebanese-join-the-free-syrian-armys-struggle.ashx#ixzz1wPrhLyye
(The Daily Star :: Lebanon News :: http://www.dailystar.com.lb)
some guy
@Culture of Truth:
semi-evil, sort of a fan, but not really?
taylormattd
@J. Michael Neal: lol.
David Koch
Matt Taibbi is an idiot loudmouth, pathetically stealing Hunter S. Thompson material, who can’t even balance his checkbook, must less understand economics.
Seriously, if Taibbi was constantly ranting about doctors, everyone would say, “he’s not qualified on the subject, given he doesn’t have any medical training, experience, or credentials”. But since everyone owns a calculator and makes out a household budget, they think anyone can pontificate about economics, especially when using a dead writer’s style.
Bnut
I don’t have anything against Taibbi, but he does have one of those faces that looks like it should be punched. Hard to explain. Sort of like Douthat, or David Gergen.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@David Koch: You could have just quoted this:
and answered “No”.
AT
I don’t think Matt tiabii tries to be an economist, however he is invaluable for setting out the vast fraud and unethical behaviour that goes on in the banking/finance sector
taylormattd
@David Koch: Oh David, how terribly rude.
You know Anne, I’ll decline to answer your question, because “[you have] the wormiest, wordiest, least coherent ‘supporters’ in this little corner of the internet—which is why I usually don’t bother reading the comments when I read [your] posts.”
David Koch
Matt Taibbi is to Hunter Thompson, as
Pat Boone is to Little Richard
Matt Taibbi is to Hunter Thompson, as
Dennis Miller is to George Carlin
Matt Taibbi is to Hunter Thompson, as
Sarah Palin is to Hillary Clinton
Redshift
@David Koch:
I’m not sure if that would be the response if we’d just gone through a situation where doctors who do have the training, experience, and credentials had caused one of the biggest worldwide epidemics in modern history.
I’m not saying he’s right (I haven’t read much of his writing), I’m just saying that dismissing him on the basis of credentials may not be the most effective argument.
Redshift
However, I will say that as a Twitter user, I think this is a really dumb idea. Recruiting people to be your Twitter zombies will not “reach a massive audience,” it will just guarantee that your message will immediately be dismissed because you’ve announced in advance that you’re using a shiny new spamming technology.
David Koch
@Redshift:
That’s the exact response I’ve seen to Jenny McCarthy’s crusade against inoculations.
Taibbi is as qualified on economic/finance as Jenny McCarthy on medicine/science.
300baud
I am willing to forgive every one of Taibbi’s flaws because he’s one of the very few writers with a national platform and a business beat who isn’t a stenographer, a fluffer, or a regurgitator of press releases.
And honestly, as somebody who used to work in the financial industry and has been reading The Economist for decades, I think he understands finance reasonably well.
David Koch
0
burnspbesq
@David Koch:
Matt Taibbi is to Hunter Thompson as Roy Williams is to Mike Krzyzewski.
The prophet Nostradumbass
I’m becoming more and more convinced that the people who like to (unfavorably) compare Taibbi to Hunter S. Thompson haven’t read much of Thompson’s writing, much of which was a load of drug-fueled horseshit. Taibbi and Thompson are most alike in that they can (could, in Thompson’s case) generate some genuine insight, like a small island in an ocean of swill.
JGabriel
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300baud:
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Ding, ding, ding. Seconded.
.
SamR
@burnspbesq: I think he’d say that if its unconscionable, it probably should be a crime.
I joined his thunderclap thing.
Joey Maloney
@Bnut: Actually, I’ve always thought he bears a rather eerie resemblance to Billy Bob Thornton.
burnspbesq
@SamR:
And in most instances, I would agree. But Taibbi consistently obliterates the distinction between “should be” and “is.”
There is a meaningful difference between saying “in a just world, Lloyd Blankein would be behind bars” and saying “Lloyd Blankfein is a criminal.” And Taibbi either doesn’t get that or gets it and lies about it.
David Koch
Taibbi really has a stroke of genius with this “Thunderclap” idea.
If we all tweet at the same time, think of what we can accomplish.
We change the world using the bully-tweeter.
ornery_curmudgeon
David Koch is basically a troll.
Dr. Squid
You mean the Yeahbutters have finally given up the “Kill Dodd-Frank because it’s not good enough” crusade?
El Cid
If it isn’t a Goldman Sachs press release, I don’t trust it.
Egilsson
People who are lauding Thompson over Tiabbi are likely poseurs who haven’t actually read Thompson – they just think they know his sctick and believe it sounds smart to talk smack.
Tiabbi is much better than Thompson, and certainly has provided a more useful role.
In fact, I’m puzzled and surprised at the negativism. Seems like a good idea to me, and a possibly interesting technique to garner attention. That’s valid and laudable.
I think Tiabbi is one of the progressive heros over the past 10 years. Have you read his takedown of the Republican congress? It was epic. His impressions of the republican convention? His assaults on Goldman Sachs and the SEC?
That’s good stuff, and it’s actually important. Certainly much more than worthless blog commenters who can only fling feces as a mode of expression.
Rob in DC
More nonsense from the Balloon-Juice brigade about how no crimes were committed. Keep parroting Obama and the rest of the banker fellating politico’s that populate the halls of our societies elite institutions. No acknowledgment of the lack of serious investigations or efforts to prosecute serious white collar crime in the last 9 years of this countries existence.
Instead we have sowed a harvest of fraudulent mentality and criminality in the financial markets that has been carefully watered and cultivated by Obama and Bush and has flowered into a monstrous environment free from any restraint. Fraud happens daily in this country and would in fact be trivial to prove if anyone in our government’s executive branch gave a shit about it. Sarbanes Oxley imposes STRICT liability on executives who sign off on misstatements in their annual and quarterly reports. The SEC does in fact know about and use it (http://www.lexisnexis.com/community/corpsec/blogs/corporateandsecuritieslawblog/archive/2012/04/03/another-sox-304-strict-liability-action.aspx), however only for small fries like this pathetic medical device manufacturer.
Sarbox liability is blatant in the case of both JP Morgan and MF Global, two cases where the Obama administration’s SEC has punted the ball at 1st and 10 on the 50 yard line. Could it be any more obvious that the lack of prosecution is a consequence of top level commands to treat Obama’s pals lightly. Don’t want to send Corzine up the creek when he fund raised for Obama! (Yes I know Obama gave it back, please.)
Outside of Sarbox liability fraud isn’t some sort of mystically difficult thing to prove, it requires 4 provable elements, materiality, intent, causation and damages. Materiality is so blatantly obvious from almost all the shit behavior of the last 10 years that it is per se, intent can and has been derived in numerous cases (such as a Citigroup CFO testifying to Congress that Citi was aware that 80% of the mortgages they were packaging in CDOs in 2007 were nonperforming garbage), causation and damages are trivial in relation to intent.
Recently a group of public officials were convicted in Jefferson County Alabama of accepting bribes in their sewer system swap debacle. A bribe is at least a two person crime, there is the person who accepts the bribe, and the person who makes it. The people who made the bribes were JP Morgan bankers. Prosecution? No, nothing to see here folks. It was wrong but not illegal like Obama said!
No, Taibbi is not some random asshole spitting on the technically innocent and the guilty alike. He calls out the very real problem that our government is FUCKING OWNED by fraudulent banks. That goes all the way to the top, including your hero and personal savior Obama. This corruption stains him with a shit smell I will never be able to ignore, even when I vote him for this fall to avoid whatever catastrophe the Republicans are cooking up. Obama’s other accomplishments do not even come close to wiping the slate for this shit. He is a corrupt asshole, marginally better than the apocalypto lords that the Republicans have become. Great country we live in, HOPE and CHANGE!
As always you make fun of the assholes in the media calling for more civility like David Brooks when it hurts your party (YOUR TRIBE). But when someone takes you up on your word and writes uncivilly about the most pernicious forces in our society, a financial elite that is literally raping and robbing the entire western world for their own aggrandizement, well Taibbi is too shrill!
ShadeTail
People who claim that Taibbi doesn’t understand the difference between “immoral” and “criminal” very obviously haven’t read his work. He regularly makes it clear that the thievery and fraud he writes about was perfectly legal, and declares (completely correctly) that this is the real problem. That’s what his whole “vampire squid” metaphor was about; the vulture capitalists are parasites who have wrapped themselves around our economy and taken control of it.
IrishGirl
@MikeJ: And how does that have any bearing on the merits of the “Thunderclap” message he is pushing? Isn’t getting through to Congress not to roll back Dodd-Frank a worthy goal regardless of the path you followed to get to that understanding?
SteveinSC
Obama and the rest of the banker fellating politico’s Now that is our exquisite troll, burnsy, to a T.
Dr. Squid
@SteveinSC: Does that include the wanton apostrophe abuse?