Apparently, these rats are going to fuck themselves:
As Dana Geraghty recalls it, March 16th was a “rather quiet Wednesday.” That afternoon, she was in her cubicle at the Open Society Foundations, on West Fifty-seventh Street, where she helps oversee the nonprofit group’s pro-democracy programs in Eurasia. The Foundations are the philanthropic creation of George Soros, the hedge-fund billionaire, who is a prominent donor to liberal causes, including Hillary Clinton’s Presidential bid. Soros, who has spent nineteen million dollars on the 2016 Presidential campaign, is regarded with suspicion by many conservatives. National Review has suggested that he may be fomenting protests against Donald Trump by secretly funding what it called a “rent-a-mob.” Geraghty, who is twenty-eight, had programmed her office phone to forward messages from unfamiliar callers to her e-mail inbox. She was about to review several messages when she noticed that one of them was extraordinarily long. “Who leaves a seven-minute voice mail?” Geraghty asked herself. She clicked on it.
“Hey, Dana,” a voice began. The caller sounded to her like an older American male. “My name is, uh, Victor Kesh. I’m a Hungarian-American who represents a, uh, foundation . . . that would like to get involved with you and aid what you do in fighting for, um, European values.” He asked Geraghty for the name of someone he could talk to “about supporting you guys and coördinating with you on some of your efforts.” Requesting a callback, he left a phone number with a 914 area code—Westchester County.
She heard a click, a pause, and then a second male voice. The person who had introduced himself as Kesh said, “Don’t say anything . . . before I hang up the phone.”
“That piqued my interest,” Geraghty recalls. Other aspects of the message puzzled her: “Who says they’re with a foundation without saying which one? He sounded scattered. And usually people call to get funding, not to offer it.” Victor Kesh, she suspected, was “someone passing as someone else.”
She continued to listen, and the man’s voice suddenly took on a more commanding tone. The caller had failed to hang up, and Kesh, unaware that he was still being recorded, seemed to be conducting a meeting about how to perpetrate an elaborate sting on Soros. “What needs to happen,” he said, is for “someone other than me to make a hundred phone calls like that”—to Soros, to his employees, and to the Democracy Alliance, a club of wealthy liberal political donors that Soros helped to found, which is expected to play a large role in financing this year’s campaigns. Kesh described sending into the Soros offices an “undercover” agent who could “talk the talk” with Open Society executives. Kesh’s goal wasn’t fully spelled out on the recording, but the gist was that an operative posing as a potential donor could penetrate Soros’s operation and make secret videos that exposed embarrassing activities. Soros, he assured the others, has “thousands of organizations” on the left in league with him. Kesh said that the name of his project was Discover the Networks
I’ve seriously laughed about this a dozen times. O’Keefe and company are just hysterical.
*** Update ***
God damnit I missed Betty’s post on this. Oh well, when am I going to get another chance to use that picture?
bystander
I’m hoping on November 9, 2016.
Howard Beale IV
Well Cole, just take comfort in knowing that Daliden won’t be able to get easily pardoned if he’s found guilty.
Jerzy Russian
I wonder if they filmed themselves doing this. Now that would be funny to see.
hueyplong
Can’t say I minded seeing this story twice.
BGinCHI
It reminds me of the SNL where they do the Nixon recordings as though they were just messing around.
Prediction: O’Keefe dies in a motel room of undetermined cause.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
I suspect that many of us would have been shocked if you had seen Betty Cracker’s post on the topic. The story is hilarious, and worth revisiting. And you had just the picture for it.
Gin & Tonic
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): And we know it’s a Cole picture because it’s out of focus.
JPL
You’ll have plenty of opportunities to use that picture. BTW where did you get it?
The Preakness is on and the track is wet. I think Stradivari wins, just because.
Josie
How long have you been saving that picture for just such an occasion?
Benw
They weren’t even clever enough to identify themselves as “Hugh Jass”.
A Ghost To Most
At least one rat in that picture knows what he is doing. The same can’t be said for O’Keefe and his rat(fucking) pack.
chelsea530
In the New Yorker article, he also claimed that he has an insider working at the “highest levels” of the Clinton campaign and is getting all kinds of juicy details.
Whatever, you little worm.
Baud
And the Kochs chuckled.
trollhattan
@BGinCHI:
Maybe undetermined but the double-wetsuit will be a fat clue.
trollhattan
@Baud:
For the Kochs that’s known as Tuesday.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Jerzy Russian: You’re in luck, they did film it.
BillinGlendaleCA
@BGinCHI:
You don’t fuck with the Hilbeast, ask Vince Foster.
Baud
I just realized that everything I know about Soros I know from conservatives complaining about him. He is simply a non-issue for our side.
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: I own his Open Society book.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Benw: There were plaques mounted in the University Library when I was a student of former head librarians. One was named “Hugh G. Dick”. The caption under his name after his term of service said “Friend of all students”.
Redshift
Hmmm, that’s the name of the David Horowitz “project” started in 2004 to “investigate” Soros and supposed shadowy organizations on the left (woo, scary!) I wonder if O’Keefe is working for him now, or is just too dumb to google his cool new code name and see if there’s another wingnut already using it. I’d put the odds at about 50-50 for either one.
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus: You’re on O’Keefe’s list.
Baud
OT, CNN
Credit where it’s due.
Mnemosyne
Speaking of rodents, I’m making this baby hat for a work shower on Tuesday. Trying to resist the urge to make matching booties and (thumbless) gloves.
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: jl is O’Keefe’s mole in the Baud campaign.
Jeffro
@BGinCHI:
That’s probably spot on: it’ll be hard to determine whether or not he kicked away the chair on purpose, or kicked it over accidentally while, you know…
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus: that explains the shiftiness.
JPL
@srv: My senator, David Perdue, voted for funds for zika as long as the CDC diverted from another source.
trollhattan
@Baud:
Yup.
Don’t think it’s a stretch to believe the campaign is sitting on a goldmine of Trump material. What they have that the Republicans and more to the point, Trump lack is the campaign experience and patience to know when to use it. To borrow the meme, we need to chill the fuck out, she’s got this.
BillinGlendaleCA
@srv: Sure, we all know that viruses have ultimate respect for walls.
Redshift
@Baud: Most of the the things conservatives argle bargle about as being incredibly outrageous on The Left are things no one on the left has ever heard of. I suspect that’s a feature for those who propagate the outrage list down from the top, but a bug. If they go off on something that’s been widely covered, non-wingnuts can easily identify it as BS. If it’s obscure, trying to find out anything about it will only turn up wingnut sources, and some of them won’t be easily identifiable, so they may convince a few more people, and wingnuts will get to feel like they have secret knowledge.
Case in point: Ben Rhodes. (Don’t worry , I only vaguely remembered the name myself.) A couple of weeks ago, I happened to see the front page of the Washington Times, which had an article about an Obama advisor who had supposedly embarrassed us with allies and caused an uproar with prominent Democrats. I kept an eye out in case it was something real, but I didn’t see anything in any real news outlet. But from occasionally flipping past the local wingnut station on the way to work, Ben Rhodes is now up there with Jeremiah Wright in the Two Minutes Hate. And I caught part of some conservative event on C-SPAN radio about him, from which I learned that the source of the uproar is a NYT Magazine profile, and most of the quotes that inspire outrage are the author of the piece describing him and his supposed actions, not things he actually said or did. But the point is, they have a chew toy that they’re sure proves the Obama Administration deliberately sold out us (and Israel, even more importantly) to Iran, and they’re not letting go.
BillinGlendaleCA
@trollhattan: It’s actually worse than that, Trump refused advice to investigate himself.
trollhattan
@JPL:
Christ, they have so much fun with their schoolyard “zero sum” budgeting game. “We’ll just take the money from this loser disease–you, smallpox, get over here and give zika your lunch money.”
Pathological.
Redshift
@JPL:
Well, that makes sense. Diseases are zero-sum, so if we need more money for one, we must need less for others, right?
BillinGlendaleCA
@trollhattan: They just want to divert it from “Waste and Abuse”, which we all know, along with “Foreign Aid” is most of the Federal spending.
RK
NYTimes did a big story on him recently, no? And many weighed in on that piece.
jl
” when am I going to get another chance to use that picture? ”
I thought Cole would be saving it for something in the GOP convention or general election campaign.
As commenter above said, there will be opportunities, if Cole wants to inflict it on us again.
Davebo
Don’t worry John. We read your blog so you don’t have to.
PaulWartenberg2016
O’Keefe and his crew need to get called back before that judge that put them on probation, and have that probation taken away so they can go serve jail time, and the judge holding O’Keefe in contempt because, damn, such stupidity deserves punishment.
MobiusKlein
@srv: we need a well funded nih research system to find new antibiotics. And make a huuuuge profit based on our new knowledge!
trollhattan
@BillinGlendaleCA:
Rules are for little people.
Willard got away with a good deal of deflection, more than I expected, but Donny is a much richer target given his decades-long love of the spotlight. Mormons are much more circumspect. Hell, Joan Rivers was more circumspect.
Achrachno
Cole’s picture is of house mice: a lesser rats. Still works for O’Keefe.
jl
@Redshift: The GOP House, using its vast medical, public health, and epidemiological expertise, decided that since the most recent Ebola outbreak is over, we don’t have to worry about it anymore, and should use that money. I think that was the biggest money pot that they wanted to raid.
If we get even a few mosquito borne Zika infections in the US, I wonder who will freak the most and yell about government incompetence? And if there is another Ebola outbreak (God forbid), even a small one, their heads will explode in fear and rage. They are like toddlers breaking one toy after another, falling into continuous tantrum about how nothing works.
RK
@Davebo: Always find it funny that he’s often clueless about his own site.
chopper
@srv:
well, duh, Bernie. if DWS were elected president she wouldn’t have time to be chair of the DNC.
Mike J
@RK: Yeah, he said that newspapers used to have foreign bureaux, now they don’t, the 27 year old kids they send to cover the white house have never covered anything other than an election, and the nation is worse for it.
Emma
@Mnemosyne: You might as well go all in.
scav
@Redshift: Diseases are notoriously very well-behaved. They stand patiently in line, arriving one at a time, don’t jump queues and absolutely respect the orderly minuet of budget and funding cycles (not to forget curtsying to political grandstanding and the generation of commercial sound bites).
SiubhanDuinne
@JPL:
Maybe from all that money they’re wasting on studying gun violence?
Oh, wait….
MobiusKlein
@srv: because obesity and alcoholism are serious issues in our country?
Mike J
@chopper: Since the chair of the DNC is an elected spot, not appointed, it would be very surprising indeed if she were appointed. Her term is up this year, no word yet on if she is running.
debbie
@Baud:
On the day of the 2010 elections, I was listening to his show while driving to an appointment. He said his goal that day was to make Soros cry, which wouldn’t be easy because Soros had spent WWII throwing dead Jews into the ovens. I almost drove off the road.
BillinGlendaleCA
@jl: Since Zika can be spread by sexual means, if those sluts would just put an aspirin between their legs…
SiubhanDuinne
@chopper:
Well, but, gotta give him some credit. At least he said it with “all do respect.”
debbie
@Mnemosyne:
So cute! I remember buying my baby niece a strawberry cap.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Mike J: I believe that another term for DWS would be unusual. She’s already been DNC chair for 5 years, IIRC that’s almost record length. I checked there were 2 chairmen that served for 8 years, one in the 30’s and one in the 60’s; other than that 5 years has been the max.
gex
@Mike J: Jesus Christ. No wonder he thinks everything is unfair. He knows zip about the party and how it works. Whenever the party does something according to their published rules, and not according to the imaginary rules in Bernie’s head, he figures they are working every angle to cheat him.
JPL
@MobiusKlein: The amount that they spend on that wouldn’t even touch the amount needed by Zika. It’s a nice soundbite though, although misleading.
trollhattan
@BillinGlendaleCA:
A mosquito between the knees would be a two-fer.
Funny thing, zika is a newcomer and has a catchy name but there are much worse tropical diseases on the way. We can’t limit ourselves considering them individually, based on which is getting press.
gex
@efgoldman: Rant rescinded
trollhattan
@efgoldman:
Arrgh, busted [stares at shoelaces].
Mnemosyne
@Emma:
If I can get the hat done early enough tomorrow, I’ll try to tackle some booties. Gloves would be icing on the cake, but I’m not even sure I have white yarn on hand.
rikyrah
@hueyplong:
Me either. It was just as funny this time.
smith
@jl:
We already have zika in the US, in patients including more than 100 pregnant women. But they’re mostly in Puerto Rico so far, so I guess the Rs in Congress won’t be too fussed about it.
WaterGirl
@smith: My theory is that the republicans are actually hoping for a big zika outbreak because they think it will help them in November. Given that they are sociopaths, there is no reason for them to care that people will die and children will be born with terrible birth defects.
Chip Daniels
In this election year?
About a million times, I’m sorry to say.
fuckwit
Wait, wasn’t “Discover the Netowrk” Horowitz’s stupid conspiracy-theory project 10 years ago?
jl
@Omnes Omnibus:
” jl is O’Keefe’s mole in the Baud campaign. ”
Thank Baud I don’t read the comments over at that miserable sump and dead-end cesspool, almost top 10,000 political blog.
And anyway, Baud! 2016! has been its own O’Keefe’s mole. No one does that kind of thing better than Baud.
hellslittlestangel
Republicans don’t want to fight the Zika virus, because one of the effects of the virus is microcephaly — AKA future Republican voters.
jl
@smith: We have people infected with Zika in the US, but who acquired the infection in other countries. We have some people who acquired it in the US through sexual contact. We don’t have any mosquitoes in the US that are infected with Zika, biting people (and other animals?) and spreading it around. That will be when the shit hits the fan. I think only two or three species in the US can transmit it, and their way of life and locales, and how they spend their days and nights, are well known, so the experts know exactly where to look, and I have little doubt the public will know very soon after that threshold is crossed.
nellcote
foto’s a little fuzzy but isn’t the bottom rat dead?
dww44
@JPL: I literally do despise David Perdue. The worst candidate won in 2014. I get his newsletters and mostly can’t force myself to read them. OTOH, Isakson’s TV ads also make me quite angry.
Bill Arnold
@BillinGlendaleCA:
You want to ratfuck with the right, start by launching juicy conspiracy theories. Or better, nudging RWers into inventing their own. Usually RW conspiracy theories are both pathetically unimaginative and trivially not consistent with available facts (though bubble people might not notice the later). They could use some help from the creative class.
(There is no conspiracy to destroy the Republican party! Silly rumors about interventionist aliens aligned with certain … deeply hidden political forces can be safely ignored. Also, B. Obama cannot directly control the weather. And he does not have access to a time machine that can rewrite history back as far as 1961.)
SFAW
John –
Maybe my memory is faulty, but I thought “Sadly, No” and “The Poor Man” were two different blogs/persons, Similar in style, maybe, but still different.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@jl: Um, Puerto Rico is part of the USA. They’re American citizens, too.
http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/travel/notices/alert/zika-virus-puerto-rico
HTH.
Cheers,
Scott.
tjmn
@Achrachno: I can image a picture of a a big ass rat’s body with a photoshopped picture of O’Keefe’s sunglass bespectacled, pimp hat wearing head. Alas, I am not talented enough with Photoshop to bring that image to life.
BruinKid
@BillinGlendaleCA: That plaque is still there, though the library’s been completely remodeled you might not recognize it anymore.
Procopius
@Mike J: “Since the chair of the DNC is an elected spot, not appointed, …” This is incorrect. She was elected to the House of Representatives from her district in Florida. She was appointed to the position of Chairman of the DNC in April 2004. According to Politico, “Wasserman Schultz, 44, was chosen for her strength as a fundraiser and as a television messenger and for her clout in the crucial swing state of Florida, the sources said.” If Hillary wants to appoint her again she can. I hope she doesn’t.
Procopius
@efgoldman: It’s an appointed position, but Obama could have appointed someone else after 2012, and especially after the 2014 disaster. He should have. He didn’t, probably because, like Rahm Emanuel, she’s a humongous fund raiser.
Carolyn Kay
Oh, you’ll have plenty of chances to use the picture. Roger Stone is well paid to make sure of that (http://bit.ly/224NZrM).
Cleos
@Baud:
Actually, I’ve been wondering for some time if he actually existed or was just someone the Repigs made up.
Cleos
@efgoldman: I’m envious too. The best I can do is a public banquet where I publicly dissed Newt Gingrich. And I rather doubt he remembers it.