Very little pick-up by the dishonest media of incredible information provided by WikiLeaks. So dishonest! Rigged system!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 12, 2016
As usual, Trump is full of shit: There has been extensive media coverage of the mostly innocuous cache of purloined emails in the mainstream media, though it has been overshadowed by PussyGate. Gee, I wonder why the media is focusing on PussyGate instead of emails that portray a political organization engaged in political strategerizing? Maybe a genius TV impresario like Donald J. Trump can solve that mystery.
Meanwhile, Balloon Juice favorite Glenn Greenwald has published another screed denouncing objections to the “inconvenient truths” published by WikiLeaks as neo-red baiting. He accused Newsweek’s Kurt Eichenwald of being “hysterical,” “overwrought” and engaging in “righteous group-think” (and Greenwald should know from these qualities!) for doubting WikiLeaks’ objectivity and lauds WikiLeaks’ “perfect, long-standing record of only publishing authentic documents.”
Look, I’m not a security expert, but those who are have concluded that the DNC hack was the work of Russian operatives, and the Department of Homeland Security has formally accused the Russian government of engaging in ongoing efforts to tamper with our election. Seems pretty clear that the Russians are the source of the documents WikiLeaks published, unless you believe in a Documents Fairy.
As far as I’m aware, there’s no conclusive evidence that the documents published on WikiLeaks have been edited. But Greenwald’s attempt to hand-wave away that possibility rings false; that the principals have confirmed via commentary and actions that certain excerpts are genuine isn’t a blanket confirmation that the many thousands of released emails are all genuine. And WikiLeaks has been accused of selective publication of documents before.
Moreover, even if you believe WikiLeaks is as pure as the driven snow, skepticism about the documents’ authenticity is warranted since altering documents fits the Russian MO when attempting to interfere with other countries’ elections (ours too, BTW). Isn’t it entirely possible and in character for Russian operatives to alter the documents before giving them to sweet, innocent WikiLeaks for publication, as was allegedly done in the Russian-Syrian document dump published by WikiLeaks linked above? Why would WikiLeaks be uniquely immune to the old “garbage in-garbage out” axiom — the credibility of Assange? Please.
The circumstantial evidence that Assange has his thumb on the scale for Trump is pretty goddamn strong, including the timing of the releases, which just so happen to come at the worst possible time for Democrats (as the DNC gets underway) or when Trump most desperately needs an anti-Clinton media distraction (to supply “both sides” fodder to balance PussyGate).
If WikiLeaks ever was an organization with a noble agenda of “radical transparency,” it has since shrunk into the pet project of an alleged rapist who has been sleeping on an air mattress for several years in an embassy as the guest of a government with a history of repressing real journalists.
We’re supposed to uncritically trust that guy, who credulously retweets Jim “The Stupidest Man on the Internet” Hoft and Breitbart.com using the WikiLeaks Twitter account? We’re supposed to believe the former host of a Russia Today show has no pro-Putin / anti-Clinton bias? A collaborator with the odious Roger Stone who is on record expressing a preference for Trump over Clinton and whose every action during this campaign just so happens to dovetail with the interests of the Trump operation?
Fuck that. The National Enquirer was right about John Edwards, but that doesn’t make its current story on “What The Stars Really Weigh” credible. WikiLeaks has morphed into yet another Trump vendor — one that will likely get stiffed when this bullshit campaign is over, suffering the fate of thousands of other organizations that service Trump.
That is the fault of no one but its principal. And anyone who continues to regard Assange as a credible actor is likely to wind up looking like a fool.
ranchandsyrup
*puts on a glennfoil hat* how dare you?
Peale
But their oligarchs are better than ours.
aimai
Well, wikileaks probably isn’t relying on Trump for its pay. Putin is more like it. Though I wouldn’t bet on their making much off that guy either.
cokane
one thing that’s not being remarked and maybe this is far-fetched, but this kind of shit could create a vicious circle. you have (probably) a government hacking and stealing from the private accounts of politically active people in the US. it gets published everywhere and is one of the top news stories worldwide.
might just encourage more of this kind of behavior. except against the politically active in the Ukraine or Georgia. i really think the news media needs to rethink some ethical standards. I’m not saying all leaks cannot be published though.
also the lack of journalistic legwork to vet any of these docs, a bunch of people are going to end up like Dan Rather eventually.
Mnemosyne
It’s so weird to me when people act like the Russians are totally neutral actors with no interests of their own. You can dislike the American government’s actions without feeling compelled to pretend that the Russians are any better.
If the Russians are trying to get Donald Trump elected, it’s because they think he will better serve their interests. Period.
Brachiator
No.
It’s possible, I suppose. But it’s easy for the Clinton campaign to verify or deny the accuracy of any documents. And a bunch of fake documents would negate the value of any revelations.
Snowden has a reputation for honesty. If he didn’t he would have no value, and everyone would look at him as an enemy agent. I have no idea what game Assange is playing.
As it is, there are no bombshells here. A trove of trivia.
As for Greenwald, what’s the point of his purity? Jill Stein and Gary Johnson have no chance to win. So does Greenie want to see a Trump presidency?
catclub
There are two meanings of incredible.
Splitting Image
Even if the emails are entirely genuine, the biggest part of the story at this point is that a Russian news agency excerpted part of a Newsweek article written by Eichenwald (which Sidney Blumenthal had forwarded to someone else) and attributed the words to Blumenthal. Donald Trump then repeated this at a rally.
As has happened many times before, Trump made himself the centre of the story, and if that works for Clinton’s benefit, that’s not Clinton’s fault.
MattF
There was also that big Wikileaks reveal a couple of weeks ago that turned out to be a zero. The sorta interesting part of that particular debacle was Roger Stone being fooled– I do wonder how that was done.
Mnemosyne
@cokane:
It’s not totally clear that it’s specifically the Russian government doing the hacking but, to create a parallel, I’m pretty sure that if some American hackers went to the CIA with a bunch of emails they’d stolen from Putin and other Russian officials, I seriously doubt the CIA would refuse to take them.
khead
Have some more Coal kitteh. Before this comment thread heads to the stratosphere.
piratedan
@cokane: well, when you have the NYT stating that Billy Bush is a talent, perhaps your idea of the Media having any standards of journalistic intent are kind of quaint. It’s been noted for quite some time now, that the current news media model is more akin to “infotainment” rather than journalistic integrity. Is that the case in every instance, no… based on the majority of what is fed to us on a daily basis, yes. We have multiple news media organizations on the airwaves… how many of them are driving content based on actual investigative journalism? The only reason any of them jump on any of these stories is because of what trends on social media and they play catch up to whatever happens to go viral.
scary, isn’t it?
catclub
@Mnemosyne:
But it also pays to look at how other nations see this. Russia has its own interests and tries to exert its influence as best it can.
So does the US, and the CIA does not have a great record in the independent free and fair elections category, either. Other nations will see this as tit for tat, not as some horrible violation of well established norms.
FlipYrWhig
Greenwald = Breitbart
scav
Somebody told me that WikiLeaks is just some 400 lbs guy nick-named Wiki in a basement. Suffers from incontinence.
dr. bloor
@Brachiator:
Snowden is a pawn here, and not running the op. His honesty is irrelevant.
Jeffro
I’m already thinking about an Election Night watch party/celebration…need some suggestions for the food, drinks, and playlist…here’s what I have so far:
FOOD:
– Tacos (a must)…complete with some Matchbox trucks on each corner of the table…get it?
– some sort of cream cheese sculpture/dip, along with “Crooked (Hillary) carrot sticks”
– finger Sad!wiches
– Poca-hotdogs
DRINKS:
– Kaine Punch (just warm punch straight from the can…not spiked, no ice, no carbonation)
– Green Party beer (an empty Stein)
– Sloe Gin-dal fizzies
PLAYLIST:
– “Woman In the White House” – because of course
– whatever HIllz’ rally song is that everyone hates…can’t think of the name right now…
– audio loop of Alex Jones crying
(you guys can do better than these lame efforts…)
FlipYrWhig
@Brachiator: Greenwald wants you to bask in the halo of Glenn Greenwald, righteous among nations. He’s as needy a narcissist as Donald Trump, just aligned to different coordinates.
Iowa Old Lady
The WikiLeaks stuff seems pretty inside baseball to the average voter. They’ve never heard of Blumenthal. They don’t know why it should matter to them. OTOH, Trump matters to them a lot. (I was going to put something specific there instead of “Trump” but really, it’s Trump who’s been showing us the person he is and thus making people recoil.
Also Trump is a crappy campaigner, the kind who’ll make the Alicia Machato story last a week, for instance. But then, you knew that.
FlipYrWhig
@Jeffro: Rice Christie Treats
Iowa Old Lady
@Jeffro: Dig up HRC’s old cookie recipe for dessert.
Soylent Green
“Rigged” is a marketing slogan for Trump TV. Donny will keep manufacturing this outrage to cement his hold on his merry band of troglodytes, who will be easy prey for post-election grifting oppties.
gogol's wife
@Jeffro:
this Is my fight song
jl
The reliability of the Wikileaks crap is questionable. Good evidence that a recent batch was doctored to mislead about where emails came from. And nothing in them really surprising or newsworthy. Including the supposed CNN, maybe, leaking townhall questions. CNN corrupt or sloppily incompetent? . Who wudda think? So of course, the corporate media reports misleading BS from them breathlessly.
Meanwhile, the Trump ‘locker room talk’ problem may turn into multiple Trump locker room walk problems:
GOPer Claims Trump Talked About Groping Women In Actual Locker Room
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/ted-yoho-trump-lewd-groping-comments-locker-room
Way things are going, Trump might start thinking about mess the campaign may create in his family life, let alone political and business problems.
trollhattan
@dr. bloor:
Snowden just pawn in game of life.
cokane
@piratedan: it really is. the sad thing is, places like the Intercept were supposed to be investigative journalism clearing houses. Now, don’t get me wrong, there is some of that there. But alot of their stories are nothing more than just repackaging what a leaker gave them or has made public.
where’s the “investigative” part come in? i’m having trouble with that
i just find it odd that Podesta’s private chats can be megaphoned for click-dollars a bit troubling. it’s easy to justify since he’s tied to the likely future president. but none of the leaks have revealed anything as important as Trump bragging about committing sexual felonies with impunity. like is there even a misdemeanor in the emails? and where’s the line going to get drawn? private correspondence of senate candidates — even if they show no criminal, no direct corruption? mayor candidates? politicians in small and relatively powerless nations?
it’s just a really really bad precedent
jl
@Jeffro: Guests get pissed if the finger sandwiches are too dinky. Something the campaign might want to think about.
Shalimar
Saying Stone has expressed a preference for Trump is massive understatement. If Donald Trump only has one real friend in the world, it’s Roger Stone.
jl
@cokane: Hyping hacked HRC info of very questionable provenance and reliability is unethical and sloppy journmalism for $$$ and attention. And I suppose the corporate media is scrambling for raw material for ‘balance’.
US corporate news media has disgraced and discredited itself yet again during this whole election cycle. No wonder they have public approval and trust ratings down in the gutter with GOP House caucus.
Calouste
Always read “WikiLeaks” as “WikiLeaks, an organization whose sources of income are unknown and whose leader is an accused rapist on the run from justice,”.
Matt McIrvin
I’ve been seeing the line about Hillary disliking the speechwriter’s phrase “ordinary Americans” relayed as “Hillary says she dislikes ordinary Americans.” Lather, rinse, repeat.
Mnemosyne
@catclub:
It gets a little weird, though, because I don’t think the US has ever been accused of interfering in one of Russia’a elections, or any other major democracy. They usually get accused of meddling in smaller countries. In fact, if I’m understanding the dynamics right, some pro-Russia people feel like this is payback for (purported) US meddling in Ukraine. If that’s the case, then this is an escalation, not just tit for tat.
Roger Moore
Then they should have started with their own organization. Maybe they can’t share all of their information, like who is leaking documents to them, but overall they’re remarkably opaque themselves. I deeply distrust an organization that’s dedicated to airing other people’s dirty laundry but is unwilling to share even basic information about itself.
kindness
Have you noticed that ‘highly principled people’ tend to put articles out on venues that don’t allow readers to leave comments of their impressions of what was read?
I liked Greenwald early on. Now he is just another grifter of a different sort.
PPCLI
Concerning Russia and forged documents, from last year.
Matt McIrvin
@Mnemosyne: The US invaded Russia with several thousand troops in 1918. Most Americans don’t know this; every Russian knows this.
hovercraft
@cokane:
It’s already happening in Europe, he’s been meddling in their politics, mostly in support of right wing and anti EU groups. He had or has his tentacles in UKIP and Marie Le Pen’s National Front.
Temporarily Max McGee (Soon Enough to Be Andy K Again)
Song for Greenwald
Hal
One question that perplexes to this day about the email is what people think the content of those email were, and what deep, dark, hidden secrets they think were deleted? For the emails that have been released, where’s the scandal, outside the existence of the server itself.
aimai
@Brachiator: The idea that they can’t fake or add things to the documents because the Clinton people can just produce the original is absurd. You can’t disprove something like this once its out. They absolutely can have faked or added (or subtracted) things to the document dump because its worth it to them to have done so whether or not they eventually cause the public and the press to become skeptical. And not amount of denials or proofs by the Clinton people will affect some proportion of the voting public and the press from believing that there is something horrible in those emails.
Roger Moore
@Mnemosyne:
There’s good reason to think the DNC hack at least was done by Russian state actors. IIRC, the people who investigated it found evidence of hacking tools that have only been used in previous attacks linked to the Russian government. As with all these things, proving it beyond doubt is very difficult, but there’s strong reason to think the Russian government is involved.
geg6
@Brachiator:
Says you. I do not stipulate to that. In fact, I stipulate to the exact opposite.
skerry
Another disappointment:
geg6
@Jeffro:
Fight Song.
Mnemosyne
@Matt McIrvin:
I knew it — Woodrow Wilson was an asshole, so I wasn’t surprised. I still think this is supposed to be retaliation for US support of the coup in Ukraine, which Russia still thinks of as “theirs” in the same way a creepy ex-husband keeps tabs on “his” wife 20 years after she divorces him.
kindness
What happened to the comment I made a minute ago? Are others having this issue?
Iowa Old Lady
@skerry: Does that mean he won’t do the third debate?
He is the whiniest whiner who ever whined.
jl
I don’t know of anyone saying that the Wikileaks stuff should be ignored by news media. But given obvious questions about the material, every single news report needs to be hedged with a shitload of warnings. But that is not what I hear on the news. I hear them reported out as if they are some kind of newsworthy big thing (they are not), like they are from a reliable source (they are not), and as if they are some kind of objective view of HRC (they are not, they are selective, heavily edited, leaks). So, it’s crap.
Seems to me that the fact that they are mysterious hacks, with evidence that they are from a foreign government with purpose of influencing the US presidential election is at least as newsworthy as the mundane content. That should be at least mentioned with every report. But I do not remember hearing that. I just hear breathless reports of new big stuff in the latest HRC email leaks, that are so unsurprising and mundane it is hard to remember it a few minutes later. I guess the only exception is the evidence of CNN leaking townhall questions. But no smoking gun on HRC wrongdoing even there, barely even a whiff of smoke, so far.
hovercraft
@Brachiator:
Last night Halprin and his sidekick tried to explain why the media were fixated on puzzygate and basically ignoring the wiki dump, it boiled down to the fact that the wiki stuff was way deep into the weeds, stuff that if nothing else was going on might gain some traction, but with this salacious stuff coming out about Trump there’s no contest. Just like when they started in on the Clinton Foundation, nothing else was breaking through. Now every media org. is digging through every tape that Trump ever made looking for dirt.
Poor Donald.
FlipYrWhig
@Hal: Nobody fucking knows. I’ve been waiting for months for someone to ask, “Explain to me what _happened_ as a result of Hillary Clinton’s emails.”
Iowa Old Lady
@Hal: As far as I can tell, many folks are also confused about what email comes from where. The FBI said they could find no evidence HRC’s private server was hacked, so these hacked emails are coming from other people. But then you get people howling that the use of the private server exposed confidential information. At the moment, the private server seems like the most secure one around.
jl
@skerry: At this point, maybe best Trump wimp out of the last debate. We need more efficient Trump political self-destruction, that makes less trouble and distress for the public.
Calouste
@Mnemosyne:
Wikipedia on the Italian election of 1948
Calming Influence
How exactly does the Clinton campaign fight against the pure as driven snow wikileaks leaked Clinton email that says “I enjoy killing puppies.”? Does she say “I never wrote that”? Oh, sure, just like you never killed Vince Foster.
Let’s not kid ourselves about how ingrained the art of disinformation has become in our politics, or about how this Soviet style disinformation has led us to a Donald Trump.
No One of Consequence
Shit show fail parade is going… plaid!
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-russian-trump-idUSKCN12C28Q
Elect Trump, else “… Hiroshimas and Nagasakis everywhere…”
Un.
Bloody.
Believable.
– NOoC
Roger Moore
@Matt McIrvin:
And Russia invaded Poland with several million troops in 1939, but nobody thinks that gives Poland the right to meddle in Russian politics.
JPL
@skerry: Trump’s campaign spokesman told reporters that they didn’t hear correctly. What he said was he was looking forward to the next debate.
no comment
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@piratedan:
We all know the answer to that rhetorical question: none. Investigative journalism takes time…which costs and since corporate media is, well, corporate, unless they see some return on investment, they won’t fund such frivolity.
I assume a program like “60 Minutes”, despite it’s slide into irrelevance, continues to make money for CBS, otherwise it would have been axed years ago.
“Frontline” is nominally non-profit which is probably why it still exists.
Mnemosyne
@Calouste:
Can you find an example less than 68 years old?
As I said, my non-expert guess is that this is specifically retaliation for Ukraine’s overthrow of Yanukovych, not an old Cold War grudge.
hovercraft
Trump is being failed yet another vendor. TPM
Roger Moore
@skerry:
Sounds like Donald Duck is quacking about something.
Jeffro
@FlipYrWhig:
Love it. Might have to see if I can cook bacon in a spiral (as if it had been heated up on a machine gun barrel, say)
Speaking of…I think the playlist needs some Springsteen in honor of ol’ Hole. “Hollow Man” by the Cult in honor of David Brooks’ take on Trump yesterday? “Revolution” in honor of Bernie. Maybe “True Trans Soul Rebel” (Against Me!) for Gov McCrory?
cokane
@Iowa Old Lady: a number have come, allegedly, from hacking John Podesta’s email
nonynony
@skerry:
Wait – is it possible that Trump is not going to do the last debate?
That would be an interesting tactic I suppose. It certainly probably wouldn’t hurt him to not be on stage showing his low energy self to the world and spouting nonsense. On the other hand, it would open him up to criticism that he is too afraid to debate. Less than if he’d skipped on the first two, I think, since he and his supporters can make excuses about how they’re unfair to him.
I have to be honest – I’m not sure another debate is needed. Hell the first one shouldn’t have been needed. This is an election where we’re being asked to choose between an experienced, serious, policy-driven person who has shown leadership qualities for decades and a bullying halfwit whose entire fortune is based on money given to him by his Daddy when he was young. There is no debate here – only one of these candidates should even be near the Oval Office. And anyone who is still undecided at this point should just give up and go worry about the next season of the Walking Dead or something instead.
japa21
I was recently thinking, with all the furor over the Wikileaks dump (mean that in a couple different way, BTW), about 2004. The CBS-Dan Rather expose of GWB’s less than honorable military service. First of all, Rather had many items which supported our brave leader having gone AWOL, but one piece was probably forged and that is all the media focused on. They went over that one piece with a fine tooth comb to discredit the entire report.
If they vetted this crap (again more than one meaning) the same way… oh well, it is what it is.
Patricia Kayden
Greenwald is a lost soul. I could care less what he thinks about anything. It’s amazing that he’s now moved so far to the right that he is supporting Trump and consistently condemns Obama and Clinton for not being pure enough.
Peale
@hovercraft: Yes. Because it is crooked the way campaigns are run these days. With pols and fundraising and deciding what message to send to voters and trying to guess what you’re opponent is up to and trying to get negative things about them in the press. I really miss the days where the parties just put up honest gentlemen who went to debates and were judged by their ideas and eloquence. Smart guys. Guys who knew about Cicero and had studied is advice on speechifying in Latin Class. I totally get why people might be swayed by Trump against crooked Hillary. He’s a throwback to our more sophisticated better days. When you could have a debate about science vs religion in the morning and attend an entertaining minstrel show in the evening.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
I read something, somewhere on Teh Internetzez that going into the debates, Cheeto Donnie had one gauge for measuring his success: ratings. By that standard, he’s yoooooooge!
That’s why I doubt he’ll skip the last debate. As long as they pull in mongo numbers, he’ll be like a moth attracted to a light bulb.
geg6
@Jeffro:
Bowie’s “Man Who Sold the World” for the Trumpster.
cgp
@Brachiator: This isn’t wholly true. They can inundate with enough information that it’s impossible to tell what was modified quickly enough and simultaneously mislead/misrepresent. The whole point of releasing lots of unmodified stuff might be to build enough credibility to hope it pays off in a mega release at the end that is difficult to discredit at the last moment.
hovercraft
@Jeffro:
Roar by Katy Perry.
The Moar You Know
Greenwald is a serial, pathological liar. If he doesn’t like it he can come to the US and sue me for saying so.
Oh wait, he can’t or he’ll be arrested? Too fucking bad then.
amk
carnival barker rant 1 & rant 2
Calouste
@Mnemosyne: I looked up “ever” in the dictionary, and it didn’t say “less than 68 years ago”.
And of course the US has directly been involved in overthrowing the democratically elected governments of at least two major countries (Iran 1953 and Chile 1973), so meddling in elections seems pretty tame compared to that.
Marc
I agree with Greenwald on little, but he makes a very persuasive case that there is no evidence that the documents are forgeries; and. in particular, the claims by Eichenwald are flatly wrong. They don’t show anything especially shocking in any case; but we really do need to watch the tendency to dismiss any information perceived as harmful to Clinton’s campaign. It’s gotten really, really extreme in Democrat-leaning sites during the lead-up to the election and I really hope that it clears after November. Because otherwise we end up being like Republicans, dismissing any news that we don’t like.
amk
and rant 3.
the ratfucker is going mad in front of the world.
jl
@nonynony: Probably be a special Trump rally, or an extra special wildly deranged Trump tweeter twit stream during the scheduled debate. Or maybe he will go an rant on Hannity or O’Reilly*. My first thought was that a Trump wimp out would be a quicker safer self inflicted wound to his campaign. But, on second thought, that as a sad and silly hope.
*Or maybe, Trump is getting ready to go on Alex Jones?
Iowa Old Lady
@Jeffro: How about Hamilton’s cast singing Never Gonna Be President Now.
wuzzat
@Betty Cracker
Okay, but what ever happened to the pigeon?
singfoom
The entire Eichenwald Greenwald thing is absolutely weird. It’s one thing for Greenwald to say that “You can’t trust the government” about things without some verification, ok that’s fine. But multiple security experts have chimed in on the Russia hacking thing.
Then, regardless of whether it’s doctoring or not, the reality is that Trump read from Sputnik (Russian propaganda piece) words attributed to Blumenthal that were lifted from Eichenwalds articles. I honestly think Greenwald just has CDS at this point and can’t help himself from hating Hillary and believing any narrative that confirms his own preconceived notions. (Like all of us do, it’s hard to fight it)
Then people went after Eichenwald’s wife and son. That shit’s beyond the pale.
Iowa Old Lady
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage: Do you think he knows he’s losing? Or has he convinced himself that’s not possible. I want him to suffer.
? Martin
@Mnemosyne: There were considerable warnings about the US backing Ukraines entry into NATO that it would have precisely this result, that Russia would see it as a threat, both by putting NATO troops directly on Russia’s border and by eliminating one of their few warm water ports (Sevastapol). I mean, it would be somewhat counterproductive to have a Russian port in a NATO nation, no?
I mean, we didn’t exactly sit quietly by as Soviet missiles were moved into Cuba, did we? We absolutely interfered in both Cuban and Soviet politics there – with the threat of force. Russia is doing the same. We can disagree at whether that is warranted, but it’s certainly understandable.
But FWIW, it definitely is the Russian govt doing the hacking. Nobody breaks into the Podestas email account and share it with Wikileaks for the lulz.
cokane
@Patricia Kayden: theres plenty to knock greenwald for, but he’s not pro trump. if i had to guess his vote, it’s probably Stein. But, frankly, it wouldn’t shock me if it’s Clinton (or would have been in a close race)
ETA: Also wouldn’t surprise me if he just doesn’t vote anymore. Wouldn’t be the first political blowhard to do so.
hitchhiker
Of course Assange is helping to boost the Donald; if he weren’t, there would be just as many R documents out in the helter-skelter-twitterverse as there are D documents. I’ll care what Greenwald thinks when he explains the imbalance to me. Until then, screw him and his tiny little mind.
trollhattan
@No One of Consequence:
Russian tough guy is afraid of a girrrrl! Hard to find a good oligarch these days.
Cacti
I’d be apt to think Greenwald and Assange were less than completely full of shit, were it not for their Russia and China-sized blind sports toward certain, prominent, authoritarian regimes and their atrocious records on human rights and press freedoms.
jl
@Marc: I disagree. There is evidence that material in previous leaks from same sources was doctored to look like from HRC State dept. but was really from Democratic Party and associated campaign committees.
“Well, so good so far, we don’t think we’ve been burned yet” is a very weak rationale for taking the leaked material at face value. But I don’t think even that weak-ass an inadequate rationale is there for HRC emails. But the material is being reported at face value, but It is simply irresponsible and unethical journalism to report them at face value. Period. End of story. Full stop.
Unreliable and unverified reports of more Trump sex assault and misbehavior is being treated as unreliable and unverified Same should go for HRC email BS.
Peale
@Patricia Kayden: Yep. Pretty much off the deep end.
I’ve been having my go around with Duterte supporters and I’m wondering how long it is before he becomes the next big world leader who my foreign policy progressive betters tell me is the real deal. I mean, he’s talking about throwing the US out and aligning with China and Russia and using the language of anti-colonialism and says he’s a socialist. If he makes 1/2 good and runs after Russia, I’m sure he’ll be the new darling, now that it really is apparent that former darlings are really dictators in disguise.
Greenwald has no stake in domestic politics and his one goal is to see the destruction of American power. That’s his game. And he’ll run after any strongman who he thinks will bring the country down. Doesn’t matter, per se, if Putin’s vision is a world ruled by strongmen who don’t interfere in each other’s business and who maintain power by the complete destruction of any groups with liberal goals. That’s just fine as. So much the better if those leaders maintain power internally by making the US the scapegoat. They love anyone who does that.
Jeffro
@amk:
I agree…it’s kind of unbelievable, watching a 70-year-old man go one a weeks-long toddler snit, but there it is.
Hey Paul and Mitch and Reince: if you don’t mind, we’d kind of like to avoid Der Trumpster taking the whole democracy down with him…could we at least get a joint statement attesting to the legitimacy of our elections and the legitimacy of whomever is elected President? Thank you.
Brachiator
@aimai:
I never said that they could not fake or add things to the document. I said that the documents only have real value to the extent that they are accurate.
I also presume that the Clinton people would have a chance to verify the accuracy of the documents. The Trump audio tape was presented to Billy Bush and Trump’s people. That’s how real journalism, even trash journalism, works.
These fools obviously can get some play out of faked documents with the gullible and dedicated haters, but time is working against them. Most of the press, except for Fox News and the Observer, might be reluctant to publish this stuff if has been shown that some of it is obviously fake, especially if they can go with gold standard Trump dirt instead.
hovercraft
@Hal: @FlipYrWhig:
The Russians the Chinese and ISIS hacked into the server and now have all of our secrets.
What’s that you say, the FBI says there is no evidence that the server was hacked. Yes they did say that but they cannot say with 1000% certainty that it was not hacked son that means that means it was hacked and now they have all our secrets including conversations between Hilary and Obama.
Cacti
@The Moar You Know:
Actually, I think Greenwald is pissed at Obama for not finding him important enough to have arrested, or even detained at JFK during his last trip to the US of A.
WereBear
If Goldwater was:
Trump is:
hovercraft
@No One of Consequence:
Well it worked in Iowa in the primary didn’t it? He called them stupid and he won it right?
different-church-lady
@Brachiator:
Pull the other one!
amk
singfoom
@Marc: It is true that Sputnik attributed something to Sidney Blumenthal that was written by Eichenwald. It is true that Trump quoted that Sputnik piece. Right? Do we agree on those two things?
I don’t know whether the latest wikileaks dump is doctored or not, I cannot honestly say. Now, according to Eichenwald on NPR, the only place on that had published at the time Trump said that at his rally was Sputnik. So, ok, we can’t know that Sputnik did it on purpose instead of a mistake.
Neither can Greenwald. Sputnik fucked up, if it was intentional then it is doctoring. If it was unintentional, it was bad journalism. Regardless of which is the truth, it’s still weird as fuck that that specific content made it into Drumpf’s hands and then into his stump speech in such a quick fashion…
trollhattan
@Cacti:
If it’s good enough for Cliven Bundy….
Roger Moore
@jl:
One of the big problems with document dumps of this type is that they can easily be so big that it’s impractical to impossible for a news organization to dig through them in a reasonable time; they certainly can’t dig through them as fast as the 24 hour news cycle demands. That creates a huge opportunity for the leakers to frame things by highlighting the information they want to be the story. Even when that highlighting grossly distorts the information, some news organizations will run with it because it gives them the jump on publication.
The Kurt Eichenwald story wrongly attributed to Sidney Blumenthal is a great example. Blumenthal forwarded the story to Podesta, and Sputnik turned it into a story where they A) presented Eichenwald’s story as something Blumenthal had written and B) selectively quoted stuff buried deep in the story that distorted its overall message. Even though it was a gross distortion two different ways, it still got picked up and broadcast in social media.
NorthLeft12
@Matt McIrvin: Hey, you guys invaded us too. We were not exactly a country then [1812], but geez what did you go and do that for?
I understand the Mexicans have a similar gripe. Not to mention Cuba, Grenada, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Haiti, Panama, Puerto Rico, Honduras, Dominican Republic, and El Salvador. And that is just North America and the Caribbean.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@Iowa Old Lady:
One way to describe Cheeto Donnie’s thinking is:
When all you are is a dick, everything looks like a measuring contest.
Until people actually vote, yeah, he thinks he’s winning because TV ratings are his measure. Even when he loses, he’ll convince himself he didn’t because he’s thinking long term about the grift. To quote Thomas H Crown somewhat out of context (the guy who tweeted that Cheeto Donnie was running his campaign like a real estate deal):
“Trump [will] fall back on one of the traditional [real estate developer] escape routes: Make this all about the investors, not him.”
He’ll blame the GOP for back stabbing him, he’ll blame voter fraud, he’ll blame anything he can think of but it’ll never be about him.
Mnemosyne
@Calouste:
Serious question: do you really think that Russia is motivated more by the events in Ukraine from 2014, or by US meddling in Italy in 1948?
I don’t doubt that the Iranians and Chileans are enjoying watching us squirm right now, but I really doubt that Russia’s current actions are meant to avenge them.
trollhattan
@amk:
Wow, astonishing turn in four days.
hovercraft
@cokane:
They are said to have 10 years worth of e-mails because he never deletes anything, so that also covers his time in the White House, but one hopes he wasn’t conducting official business on his private e-mail. Right?
Cermet
@Mnemosyne:You forget Afghanistan? And lets not forget they stationed many tens of thousands of troops in most of Eastern Europe into the 80’s against the wishes of the locals. Yes, we are the 800 lbs gorilla in world politics and they are a light weight, undersized small chimp.
Aleta
@Jeffro: Full set of the ‘GOP dropout’ songs by Randy Rainbow (on youtube) ?
cokane
@hovercraft: dunno, only emails ive seen so far are ones where he’s talking campaign shop, soo, i assume that’s when he was a private citizen
singfoom
This is the only piece I was able to find that has a picture of the original Sputnik article (it’s been taken down).
WP Story Link
The misrepresentation isn’t in quoted text, but in the actual subhead of the article. Here’s the original:
Wikieleaks original Blumenthal link
I don’t know about you, but when I read the original, it’s pretty clear that Blumenthal is quoting Eichenwald’s piece verbatim. I find it hard to believe that an editor would read that and make the “mistake” of thinking it was Blumenthal’s words when this is at the top of the e-mail:
YMMV
Andrew Beck
@singfoom: I’m willing to bet Sputnik messed up. They were in a hurry to find something, English isn’t their first language, and they ran with it. They pulled the story, which leads credence to the idea it was a mistake.
The only controversy is Donald Trump quoting the piece. His campaign is either monitoring and re-reporting a Russian propaganda org, working hand in hand with the Russian propaganda org, or he made the same mistake that they did. None of those look great for Trump.
singfoom
Original comment got eaten for a naked link in the quoted text.
This is the only piece I was able to find that has a picture of the original Sputnik article (it’s been taken down).
WP Story Link
The misrepresentation isn’t in quoted text, but in the actual subhead of the article. Here’s the original:
Wikieleaks original Blumenthal link
I don’t know about you, but when I read the original, it’s pretty clear that Blumenthal is quoting Eichenwald’s piece verbatim. I find it hard to believe that an editor would read that and make the “mistake” of thinking it was Blumenthal’s words when this is at the top of the e-mail:
YMMV
hovercraft
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage:
Only the first one, apparently almost a third of the audience saw enough in the first one and felt they didn’t need to tune into number two. 84 million for the first, 67 million for the second. It was the 10th highest rated debate or something, so not so hot Donnie.
Marc
@jl: The specific case in Eichenwald looks pretty much as Greenwald describes (looks more like a Russian transcription error than a false document, if you actually look at the document.) Leakers and hackers always have an agenda, and it’s pretty reasonable to be cautious about selective or out of context leaks. Instead, I’m having friends announcing on FB that all of the Wikileaks stuff is known to be filled with doctored documents. That’s just not true.
FlipYrWhig
@Peale: Alternatively, Glenn Greenwald is an asshole who likes to argue.
Roger Moore
@Iowa Old Lady:
That’s one less thing to worry about!
Brachiator
@hovercraft:
Puzzygate is easy, especially if you have audio and video. Here is Trump saying vile stuff.
No need for vetting, analysis, explaining. Trump easily loses this round of duelling revelations, and the clock is ticking.
@cgp:
Interesting theory. Tough to pull off. The more explosive the revelation, the more carefully it must be vetted by legitimate news organizations.
Cacti
@Andrew Beck:
I’m willing to bet the opposite. Sputnik knew it was garbage, fed it to the Trump campaign anyway, and were surprised at how quickly they were found out.
? Martin
@Iowa Old Lady: You always have to keep in the back of your mind that this person has a personality disorder. You can tell him that he’s losing in the polls, and he’ll hear that, but he shows up at a rally with adoring fans who hang on his every word and that feeds his psychological need to such an extent that he probably can’t resolve those two things. I suspect he genuinely believes that he should be winning, and cannot reconcile why he isn’t. So he whipsaws from explanation to explanation – polls are rigged, Hillary is cheating, Ryan isn’t helping, the RNC isn’t doing enough, etc.
The fact that it’s him is unfathomable – the best memory of anyone, the biggest brain, etc. That’s not him bragging – narcissists really believe that. I don’t think Trump voters realize that – he’s dead serious when he says those things. And that’s what so sad about this entire spectacle. The GOP used to call themselves the Party of Personal Responsibility, and they’ve nominated someone who is psychologically unable to take responsibility for any of his actions. And this isn’t a new thing:
Trump is quite possibly the most perfect vehicle to carry the drama triangle for the party.
Marc
@singfoom: Russian propaganda outlets aren’t known for their sophistication in these sorts of things. This is not a sign that the document itself is forged; it’s a sign that a Putin outlet misrepresented it. And Trump, who treats internet rumors from random people as reliable sources, believed it when it was forwarded to him…
Cacti
@Marc:
When dealing with Russian state media, it’s always best to give them the benefit of the doubt…
Since when, exactly?
singfoom
@Andrew Beck: I disagree. If they’re publishing in English, they’re at least fluent enough to have written the subhead in which the “mistake” was made. Look at my comment @105 and click through to the Wikieleaks original Blumenthal link.
It’s within the realm of possibility that it was a mistake rather than on purpose, but I find it VERY VERY hard to believe after reading the original with NEWSWEEK in caps before it starts.
YMMV
Mnemosyne
@? Martin:
There’s definitely a tricky diplomatic problem with Ukraine and NATO, but I haven’t seen any plausible evidence that the US backed the overthrow of Yanukovych, which is Russia’s claim. There seems to be a whole lot of evidence that Yanukovych was corrupt and that the citizens of Ukraine decided on their own to get rid of him.
Ukraine wanted to distance themselves from Russia by joining NATO, Russia didn’t like that. There was probably an opening for Russia to offer Ukraine a few carrots to stay with them, but that’s not how Russia operates, so now we have the current mess.
FlipYrWhig
@Andrew Beck:
Isn’t there also the possibility that someone at Wikileaks is feeding selective interpretation of embarrassing stuff to Russian media outlets, the Trump campaign, and The Intercept, all in parallel? Hence The Intercept saying “why blame the Russians, paranoid much, LOL.”
singfoom
@Marc:
I made no claim that it was forged. I don’t know whether the document itself is forged. I cannot prove that one way or the other, I doubt you or Greenwald or anybody can. I do think that it was a willful misrepresentation on the part of Sputnik. I don’t buy the “sorry, we’re bad at English and editing” excuse. If you do, that’s cool, we can agree to disagree.
hovercraft
@Iowa Old Lady:
He knows he’s losing and he’s going to punish everyone who’s to blame on his way down. He also believes there’s a very slim outside chance that his scorched earth campaign may depress turnout enough for him to win. But mostly he is just raging against the country for rejecting him. This a massive and very public humiliation for him and his team. Hillary is the weakest most hated candidate in the history of the world, she is scandalous, and she’s an ugly old woman, and he Donald Trump is losing to HER. The ignominy.
? Martin
Can I respectfully request that we retire ‘püssygate’? It not the vulgarity of the term (that the spam filter nails it every time is far more problematic) but it pushes the whole thing back toward the GOP way of thinking that the controversy was over the vocabulary and not the admission of a sexual assault.
We kind of have an opportunity to shine some much needed light on rape culture, and that label seems to me to undo that. And we could do without any more -gates. Betty more than almost any other FPer is capable of a sufficiently creative alternative. (Although ALs ‘squid-cloud of butthurt’ may be my favorite BJ phrase.)
Betty Cracker
@Marc: I think Greenwald and Eichenwald are both speculating about the source of the misattributed quote — Greenwald that it was an honest mistake from a Russian propaganda outfit, and Eichenwald that it was fed to Trump. Contra Greenwald, that’s not speculation with no evidence; Trump ally Roger Stone telegraphed the hacking of Podesta’s email before it happened and has used Trump as his sock puppet before.
It’s impossible to know who has the right of it, IMO, and therefore, Greenwald’s sanctimony is misplaced. That said, I don’t agree that Greenwald secretly wants Trump to win or is as bad an actor as Breitbart. He just has an enormous blind spot.
lgerard
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage:
Wait until he starts bragging about how much money he made running for president
Lyrebird
@catclub: DING!
I hope this will not be offensive, as my sense of humor can be crude…
Anyhow, your excellent point combined with your nym is extra fun after reading this RawStory coverage of a protest at that real-estate con man’s tower in NYC. Chants included, “Trump thinks he runs this town – [Kittycat] came to shut it down!”
Heh.
edited to remove kittycat term, sorry!
Iowa Old Lady
@? Martin: I guess people can fool themselves. Romney obviously thought he was winning in 2012.
FlipYrWhig
@Betty Cracker: Sanctimony is Glenn Greenwald’s lifeblood. Without it he’s nothing.
singfoom
@Betty Cracker:
That’s where I’m at too.. I’m more apt to believe it was an intentional misrepresentation than a mistake. Maybe we’ll never know, but Greenwalds sanctimony is misplaced indeed.
No One of Consequence
@trollhattan: I’m just stunned that crap like that is being bandied about. I was raised such that speaking glibly about nuclear war was considered poor form and deeply un-serious.
I am not sure that the speaker in that piece has a proper appreciation for mega-tonnage and yield calculations…
– NOoC
amk
Has the cable noise lost interest in donnie’s ‘rallies’? Looks like only pox news is doing that service.
Glaukopis in Ohio
Voted in Ohio today. It was busy at the one venue in Columbus but they seemed to be handling the crowds efficiently.
Walker
Greenwald is such a bad-faith actor that it is hard to have a legitimate conversation about anything he says. He always words things in such a way that he implies more than he actually says. And it is always 100% clear what he is implying. However, if you call him out on it, he says that he did not say that and proceeds to launch an attack on you.
Peale
Isn’t this about the time Kerry took a little hiatus to go “Duck Hunting”, because when it’s starting to slip away, pretending to go on vacation is always a winner. Kerry should call Donald and tell him that a few days off would do wonders for him.
FlipYrWhig
@singfoom: Bob Somerby on Jonathan Turley: “If he likes a president, he wants him removed. If not, he wants him arrested.” That’s the way Glenn Greenwald is too.
different-church-lady
@singfoom:
Nothing weird about it at all: Trump is a mass consumer of wingnut junk information. He has a history of adopting alt-right memes. Hell, he’s got the guy who runs one of the most prominent right-wing disinformation sites in charge of his campagin. What’s so surprising about it taking no more than a few hours to get from the crazynet to Bannon to Trump?
? Martin
@Mnemosyne: We didn’t need to actually back it. We just needed to give Russia an excuse to act, and projecting a western vision for Ukraine did that.
Man, I linked Brooks yesterday and I’m linking Kissinger today. You guys are killing me.
He said 2 years ago that this would likely prove to be a failure for both parties (US and Russia), and it certainly does look that way now. Syria is a victim of that. The hacking is an escalation of that. The oil price war is another lever in this – we’ve benefitted substantially and Russia is struggling.
Ryan
Given that there has been a decent amount of coverage, my guess is Donnie knows he’s gonna get creamed and he’s working up the crowd against the refs.
piratedan
love seeing the debate regarding the veracity of the data in hacked e-mails (or supposed e-mails) by a “supposedly” neutral” organization (wikileaks) that only show up in a few places… a Russian propaganda publication, potentially alt-right news sites and the Trump campaign and we’re worried about how many of the e-mails may have been compromised and how they could have been altered… when…
1) there’s essentially jack shit there
2) that no one seems to be alarmed that the Trump campaign asked a foreign entity to hack his political opponents
3) that post that request, said entity was hacked and the campaign asking for anything embarrassing get handed something they claim is just that.
anyone else find it dubious as fuck that the Trump campaign is playing footsey (if not additional games) with people that are not exactly allies in the world?
? Martin
@different-church-lady: And this falls off of what I said in 112. Trumps disorder is such that he’s almost unable to resist believing something that favors him. He has almost no ability to impartially weigh information that involves him. He’s the perfect target for propaganda because you can bait it with something flattering about him and then dump whatever else you want into it and he’ll buy it.
hovercraft
@cokane:
They are doing a drip drip drip, I’m assuming the one from he was just a private citizen are of least value so the won’t release them, Mrs Greenspan said the plan seems to be to daily dumps so the story never goes away. This way for the people who don’t trust her they are getting a daily reminder of why they don’t trust her.
EDIT: And Podesta says he has no idea what’s in there since some of then are so old. Greenspan basically said so far nothing explosive, just embarassing things like the campaign panicing when they realized they were losing NH badly.
Peale
@No One of Consequence: Yeah. Someone on FB posted up a video of Putin declaring that the US anti-missle defense system is almost operational and designed to neutralize Russia to ashes if the world doesn’t act soon. Not certain how much of whatever he says is “sincere paranoia” or “cynical paranoia”.
? Martin
@Iowa Old Lady: I think that was a bit different. Romney had a really qualified campaign. I think they just got their internal polling wrong and then convinced themselves that the public polling was wrong. There was really no denial about the flaws in they candidate. They knew the 47% tape hurt them. They knew Obama was popular. Romney never blamed voter fraud or anything like that. He never called Obama crooked or accused him of cheating.
singfoom
@different-church-lady: Ok fine, yes, Trump consumes an alt-right media diet. That doesn’t surprise me. What does surprise me is the Russian propaganda site > Trump campaign > stump speech.
It is an odd source to me. But maybe the overlap between Russian media online and alt-right media is bigger than I’m aware of.
Peale
@hovercraft: I will say this, though. If e-mail security isn’t the number 2 priority on November 9, I’ll be writing letters asking her to please instruct her people to mark all messages “private” and use Navajo tribe employees to transmit the most sensitive information.
different-church-lady
@hovercraft:
Remember, they spent a few weeks trying to convince everyone she had one foot in the grave. Now not only is he losing to a woman , he’s losing to a dead woman.
Gin & Tonic
@Mnemosyne:
Poor Bob, wasted all those pixels and *still* didn’t convince you. I shed a solitary tear.
Marc
@Glaukopis in Ohio: Offtopic, but God it pisses me off that they cut the hours for early voting in Ohio and eliminated almost all of the weekends. They’re not even trying to hide it any more.
different-church-lady
@Betty Cracker:
Yet.
geg6
@Walker:
This. And exactly why I consider him, always, a bad actor and completely unreliable. I automatically disbelieve anything he says. Sometimes I’m proven wrong, but that’s a rare thing. He’s a liar and self-promoter. In fact, he’s a lot like Trump.
Mnemosyne
@singfoom:
It apparently is pretty well documented that Putin is financing and supporting “alt-right” groups in Europe (including UKIP), so I wouldn’t be surprised if quite a few of those groups in the US are getting checks payable in rubles, too.
amk
All this navel gazing here is time wasting bs.
Marc
@singfoom: We’re talking about a candidate who is gullible enough to forward a Nigerian prince email chain letter. I think that Josh Marshall had something called Trumps razor, namely that the stupidest possible explanation for any Trump action is probably correct. It seems to apply here – it got to him because he has the same vetting standards as the late great Weekly World News.
hovercraft
@? Martin:
RMoney and is campaign assumed that the increase in the minority vote in 2008 was an aberration since that was an election for the first black president. They thought the 2012 electorate would be closer to the 2004 electorate, especially since the recovery was so slow. Their weighting was therefore off, which is why they were caught off guard.
hovercraft
@Peale:
Is that you Donald?
He did suggest that our military go back to couriers.
Just sayin ;-)
different-church-lady
@singfoom:
Clearly. Have you not noticed the right’s Putin love-fest of the past few years? It’s a pretty direct pipe nowadays.
MomSense
@No One of Consequence:
WTF. This is out of control.
No One of Consequence
@hovercraft: Nope. Cruz won the Iowa primary.
– NOoC
Mnemosyne
@hovercraft:
IIRC, most of the current polling is using the same 2004 assumption, which seems insane to me. I guess most of these pollsters have never met an actual African-American voter if they think they only voted for Obama because of his skin color.
catclub
@? Martin: so no puzzygate. how about puzzyghazi? people died there, so more serious.
Peale
@Gin & Tonic: It is kind of weird to just always assume that the CIA must be behind protests whenever they get tired of corruption. Like, I know Putin is probably scared to death that someday someone might be screwed over and pissed off enough to wonder how it is he came to be so very wealthy on his salary. But seriously, the US and EU and NATO may have decided which side to back and not surprisingly, backed the side least hostile to their interests. But that doesn’t mean that the people who came out are their flunky’s.
Also, I haven’t heard from BoP. I thought he’d be showing up here claiming that the Dutch are in cahoots with the US, who definitely shot down that passenger plane and tried to blame it on Russia.
The gray adder
@Jeffro: Don’t forget the falafels.
hovercraft
@different-church-lady:
Well they really are trying to outdo one another, Rudy tell Hillary to shove healthcare up her puzzy!
Well he didn’t say it but, check it out at the link.
singfoom
@different-church-lady: Oh sure, I know that the right has loved them some autocratic Putin for a long while because he’s a “strong” “macho” leader in the vein of their warped ideal of masculinity and not a “technocrat” “nerd” like Obama.
But I never connected the idea of them sourcing information from Russian online media to that love. The Moar you know…
ding7777
@Betty Cracker:At the very least, the organization’s name should be changed to WikiHacks
Betty Cracker
@different-church-lady: That’s perfectly plausible. Josh Marshall noted that many of the pallid frog Nazis jumped on the botched Sputnik story and that Trump has retweeted and otherwise glommed onto info from those dubious sources before.
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
About that LA Times poll that is always an outlier:
Here’s a link to the article.
Bobby K
He accused Newsweek’s Kurt Eichenwald of being “hysterical,” “overwrought” and engaging in “righteous group-think” (and Greenwald should know from these qualities!) for doubting WikiLeaks’ objectivity and lauds WikiLeaks’ “perfect, long-standing record of only publishing authentic documents.”
Wow, this is an incredible job of not actually stating what Mr. Greenwald writes. Mr. Greenwald meticulously explains what Eichenwald did regarding his article, but this seems to have escaped Ms. Cracker’s attention.
Matt McIrvin
@trollhattan: I’m guessing some of the huge anti-Trump shift from last weekend is going to fade rapidly, unless there are more oppo dumps that keep Trump=horrible at the top of the news. A bunch of Republican legislators are already taking back their de-endorsements.
hovercraft
@No One of Consequence:
I was being sarcastic. I know Creep won it, and back then the media was naive enough to think the taste of defeat might chase the Donald away.
Betty Cracker
@Tilda Swinton’s Bald Cap: Amazing.
Matt McIrvin
@Tilda Swinton’s Bald Cap: That LA Times poll is not even intended as an indication of the overall national mood, is it? It uses a constant sample, instead of sampling new voters every time, like the RAND Corp. poll that got some attention in 2012. It shouldn’t be averaged with normal polls, because it’s really apples and oranges.
different-church-lady
@Betty Cracker: I’d say it’s beyound plausible and nearly a certainty.
The crazy thing is Trump’s operation is supposed to be the producer of disinformation, and instead they’re serving merely as distributers, and Trump himslf is no more than a customer.
catclub
Obama was the editor of a Wired issue! Geek in chief
Optimistic news!
LeftMass
@catclub: PuzzyGrab. It needs to focus on grabbing the p, not just saying the p.
p.a.
Politico, but a good (long) interview with tRump’s biographers.
Maybe it’s old news; didn’t notice the date.
FlipYrWhig
@catclub: @LeftMass: Snatchaquiddick?
No One of Consequence
@Peale: I have never been sold on the ‘hit a bullet with a bullet’ technology. I wonder if we live in the strike zone, how comforted we would be with a Patriot Missile Defense. I imagine, I would not sleep too soundly.
– NOoC
burnspbesq
@trollhattan:
Candygram for Snowden! (With extradition paperwork inside instead of a bomb).
gogol's wife
@No One of Consequence:
Zhirinovsky is the true counterpart to Trump, not so much Putin. An incredible clown.
Taylor
@? Martin: Remember that the whole point about naming every scandal XYZ-gate started with William Safire, a speech writer for Nixon, to dull the historical impact of the Watergate scandal.
Gin & Tonic
@Peale:
I understand he went off the rails one weekend (I wasn’t around for it) and Adam warned him a couple of times then banned him.
No One of Consequence
@MomSense: I once made the mistake of watching ‘Fog of War’ with McNamara. Despite what one thinks of that individual, one cannot honestly claim that he doesn’t think, ponder, deeply consider, etc.
The line I will forever remember is (paraphrasing), nuclear weapons cannot be used. Must not be used. There is no margin of error, no learning curve. Nuclear weapons don’t destroy an infantry column, or a military base, or a town, or a city, or even a state. Nuclear weapons destroy NATIONS. There is not coming back from that. On either side.
It is almost to the point where one American considers a new Civil War to not be too terrible an idea. Maybe we could do it without bloodshed. Or without as much of it. If we are divided as all this, maybe we should separate. You know, for the good of the children. We’re not really feeling it anymore, and we know that they’re not really feeling it anymore. We don’t talk anymore, we don’t hang out. We don’t have mutual interests or mutual friends. Maybe it would be for the best. Just sign over the military bases, nuclear armaments, big planes, tanks and artillery to the United States of Canada, and you can keep *ALL* the handguns and sidearms to parade around and fondle in your Jesusland.
Is it *THAT* unreasonable to consider? I know, lots of dead and Lincoln himself would be spinning at about 1050 rpm, but I would *so* enjoy having conversations openly with other citizens about the betterment of our nation, as opposed to the oppressing of our afflicted.
This election is exhausting. Not in effort. Not in rhetoric.
But in credulity.
Fortunate Cronkite and Murrow never lived to see this.
Bah.
– NOoC
chopper
a “perfect” record, lol.
Villago Delenda Est
@dr. bloor: Prezactly. Snowden is at best a naive fool. Greenwald should know better, but he doesn’t.
Roger Moore
@Mnemosyne:
Actually, it was about tighter trade ties with the EU, not about joining NATO. And saying that the US didn’t back the toppling of Yanukovych is something the Russians are going to see as sophistry. We funded “civil society” groups in Ukraine that talked about things like ending corruption and protecting rule of law. When we talk about how you shouldn’t put up with corrupt public officials stealing money and ignoring the law, we see that as common sense stuff that everyone should support, but corrupt dictators see it as a mortal threat. When those corrupt dictators get overthrown, their buddies see a direct connection and don’t take our explanation very seriously.
Villago Delenda Est
@Roger Moore:
Hence all that pushback from Vlad.
Betty Cracker
@wuzzat: The pigeon flew away! We thought it couldn’t fly, so we caught it, noted the code on its leg band and reported it to a missing pigeon site. Then, while we were trying to figure out what to do with it as darkness set it, it flew up into a tree. Haven’t seen it since. I hope it found its way home!
@Bobby K: I didn’t set out to recap Greenwald’s article; I provided a link so that anyone who was interested could read it for themselves. My object was to dispute the notion that WikiLeaks is the pure, unimpeachable source Greenwald claims it is — a notion that underlies his broadside against Eichenwald. As I explained here, I think Greenwald and Eichenwald are both speculating about the source of the misattributed Blumenthal quote.
Enhanced Voting Techinques
@Betty Cracker:
eh, Greenwald one is just the lefty version of a teatard – it’s someone else problem to clean up the mess he creates, all he cares about is making sure no one is more idiologically pure than him
The Moar You Know
@No One of Consequence: Love the idea. But the bloodshed would come, once the economy of the “United States of Non-Violent Sane People” took off and left the “Confederate States of Deplorables” in the dust. And that would be immediate; the cessation of federal transfer payments to every Southron state (save Texas, which is the ONLY “Southern” net contributor to the US tax base) would be enough to throw those states back to the early 1800s, economically. Never mind the long-term effects of not having a bunch of imbeciles dragging down the government and economy.
And they’d come to take our shit. With guns and pickup trucks and Jesus Bibles. It would look just like ISIL taking over Mosul, but bloodier.
ETA: no, I have no fucking idea how to fix it either. The Deplorables are a true drag on progress, economy, civilization. I’m not willing to shovel them all (or any of them, just to be clear) into ovens, and I frankly don’t think anything else would do the trick. So…what now?
Ruviana
@Calouste: Guatemala in 54. They did it since Iran had worked out so well.
Cacti
@Betty Cracker:
And in Greenwald’s case, when in doubt, tie goes to giving the benefit of the doubt to the Russian state media outlet.
Roger Moore
@Enhanced Voting Techinques:
Fixed that. Greenwald is a libertarian, not a lefty; I’m pretty sure he’d be the first to point that out.
HinTN
@Mnemosyne: Iran is not a small country.
daryljfontaine
@Iowa Old Lady:
The problem with that is no one would ever believe this lyric:
D
NCSteve
@Brachiator: There are thousands of emails involved here. How is it you think its “easy” to sniff out the ones that are altered? Speaking as a lawyer who’s been in multiple cases involving similar volumes of electronic documents and email, It’s not easy. It’s a monumentally hard task for very little reward.
No One You Know
A pair of lying rapists trying to make each other relevant and right is a scam trying to be news. A pox on both their houses.