A woman approached a Washington Post reporter, Beth Reinhard, and said Roy Moore had impregnated her when she was a teenager. Except she was lying.
But on Monday morning, Post reporters saw her walking into the New York offices of Project Veritas, an organization that targets the mainstream news media and left-leaning groups. The organization sets up undercover “stings” that involve using false cover stories and covert video recordings meant to expose what the group says is media bias.
That same day, Gateway Pundit, a conservative site, spread a false story from a Twitter account, @umpire43, that said, “A family friend in Alabama just told my wife that a WAPO reporter named Beth offer her 1000$ to accuse Roy Moore.” The Twitter account, which has a history of spreading misinformation, has since been deleted.
A lot about the interaction between Reinhard and the woman, Jaime Phillips. My impression was that Phillips was trying to get Reinhard to say stuff that would look as though she was out to get Moore. Reinhard seems not to have fallen for it.
Alice Crites, a Post researcher who was looking into Phillips’s background, found the document that strongly reinforced the reporters’ suspicions: a Web page for a fundraising campaign by someone with the same name. It was on the website GoFundMe.com under the name Jaime Phillips.
“I’m moving to New York!” the May 29 appeal said. “I’ve accepted a job to work in the conservative media movement to combat the lies and deceipt of the liberal MSM. I’ll be using my skills as a researcher and fact-checker to help our movement. I was laid off from my mortgage job a few months ago and came across the opportunity to change my career path.”
Nice move to post your motives on the internet. Makes it easier to nail you. But I guess Phillips didn’t realize that reporters type your name into the search box first thing.
By 7 p.m. the message on the GoFundMe page was gone, replaced by a new one.
“Campaign is complete and no longer active,” it read.
And open thread!
debbie
Has no one sued Project Veritas yet? Why not? Drowning these bastards in legal fees only seems fair.
hueyplong
It’s always amateur hour at the O’Keefe place. The only question is whether it’s also amateur hour at the target location.
debbie
The GoFundMe is still active. Who is the fool who gave her $200???
Tokyokie
@debbie:
Undoubtedly someone who coughed up $40+ for a plastic, adjustable headband MAGA cap.
mouse tolliver
Why do they keep spelling it 1000$?
Cheryl Rofer
@debbie: Looks like it’s from the Wayback Machine. The links don’t work, and the $200 donation is from five months ago.
Edited for clarification.
smintheus
Loved the WaPo article and its take-no-prisoners approach to Republican liars….another thing to be thankful for this holiday season!
Droppy
So, really, Phillips is the innocent victim here because ACORN wrote Obama’s birth certificate and then lured her onto the boat with promises of democratic debauchery and then Planned Parenthood forced her to say those things about, the thing, that they said she did. Um. Yeah. Libtards.
TenguPhule
@debbie: Because lawsuits are expensive.
And O’Keefe’s donors have bigger pockets then his targets.
Baud
O’Keefe is doing it wrong. He should have gone to the NYT with a story about Hillary performing abortions. That garbage would be front page news.
TenguPhule
And look how fast they started the ratfucking, she started her pitch the DAY AFTER the Moore story broke.
matt
There has to be some way to set things up legally so media can off these fuckers when they try to set them up. I can shoot someone if they try to rob my house.
piratedan
@TenguPhule: really pretty impressive organization over there, while I am not a saint by any means, I do wonder how the people that ramp this shit up for a living can sleep at night, but I guess even semi-functional sociopaths have to make a living.
Johnny Gentle (famous crooner)
@debbie: I doubt they’d ever drown. They’d just close up shop and start up again under a new name. Or hell, maybe they wouldn’t even have to because they’d accumulate millions in Conservative Martyr dollars in the process.
Hell, O’Keefe paid $100,000 to settle with a former ACORN worker. He pled guilty to a misdemeanor for infamously breaking into Mary Landrieu’s office while posing as a phone technician. His stings backfire nearly every goddam time. yet he keeps chugging along and hiring more dipshits like Phillips.
People like O’Keefe can’t be sued into non-existence because they have deep conservative pockets keeping them going. It doesn’t matter in terms of finances or reputation if they lose lawsuits or get convicted (see also: felon Dinesh D’Souza). As long as they can “make the libtards angry” they’ll stay on wingnut welfare forever.
Quinerly
OT: Keith Olbermann announced on Twitter that he is retiring from political commentary. Said that Trump is “finished” because of today’s Pocahontas comment. What’s up with KO? Anyone have a clue.
David Hunt
@mouse tolliver:
Best guess is that the person who wrote it is a native of a country that denotes UScurrency that way…like Russia
Hill Dweller
@debbie: IIRC, a San Diego man that worked with ACORN sued O’Keefe and won. O’Keefe edited the tape to make it appear the man was saying/going things that didn’t actually happen.
kindness
@piratedan: What do you expect from someone who was ‘laid off from my Mortgage Banking job’? Whoring for O’Keefe is better than a bank?
Chyron HR
Be sure to get a receit.
jl
It is extremely disappointing, but expected, that slime merchants would start gaming the social change in the tolerance towards sexual harassment.
From what I have seen and heard, the TV pundits and corporate hacks pretending to be journalists have been horrible. Franken was asked in one of his interviews this weekend whether his harassment issue had made it impossible for him to take the ‘moral high ground’. I thought it was a fair question, if ‘moral high ground’ meant Franken should shut his yap wrt to other politicians who had harassment problems. And that seems to be how Franken took it, and I thought he bumbled through is answer. But, then interviewer said she was talking about Franken’s ‘moral high ground’ in the Russia investigation and his role in Sessions’ perjury problem. Now that is total BS,l and I think a question like that is either malicious or moronic.
Like it or not, I think some kind of due process is needed with elected officials. That fact is that, they were elected. It makes me sick to think Moore still has a good chance of being elected, but if he is, the fact is that the people of AL elected the schmuck What to do with him if he is elected, like refusing to seat him, is a very serious issue and can’t be handled by a bunch of shitheads on the TV gossiping about it.
(Edit: and sadly with Moore, the due process he should get may well be what is provided by the criminal courts, but looks like he will never be investigated by local authorities).
I think Pelosi was trying to make that point in her interview, wrt to Conyers, but apparently she fumbled it I haven’t heard the whole interview and or followed the flap about it, so don’t know for sure.
And also, still seems very little coverage in the media about the vileness of how AL GOP and Fox News has defamed Moore’s accusers. Or the horrible Congressional process for harassment cases which a creep like Ryan has made worse in the House. But it’s easier for dipwits in TV to gossip about whether an elected public official should or should not resign, or moronically speculate that Franken’s alleged harassment means it’s OK for Sessions to lie under oath, that somehow the allegations against Franken somehow invalidate everything he has uncovered on the Trump/Russia front.
Stuff like this makes me think we are doomed, in my gloomier moments.
ruemara
Only the best people.
feebog
James O’Keefe is a moron. Legitimate news organizations fact check stories like this. He obviously failed ratfucking 101.
waspuppet
@Baud: Project Veritas will never not be stupid, no matter what they do, but it’s remarkable that they don’t appear to have ever hired anyone who has worked in an actual newsroom.
That said, you’re totally right.
Major Major Major Major
Needs more dildo boats.
As for this:
Are you supposed to put your lack of qualifications in the sentence right after your qualifications?
kilo50
@TenguPhule: O’Keefe was convicted of using a fake ID to misrepresent himself/his group. That is a crime. Just out and out lying about yourself is apparently not a crime and for the Republicans that is decidedly a good thing.
dmsilev
At this point, whenever O’Keefe releases a video, the response from responsible media operations should be “source has a proven record of dishonesty. Not a story.”.
Sadly, I don’t think there are very many responsible media operations left.
Amaranthine RBG
Gosh, it’s almost like the Washington Post (like the New York Times) is staffed by some smart, professional people who a working hard to present factual stories to readers.
debbie
This article has a photo of her.
chris
Via Weigel, the Trump Foundation gave $10,000 to Veritas in 2015. Birds of a feather…
Adam L Silverman
@mouse tolliver: Because that’s how they write it in Saint Petersburg, Russia.
Yutsano
@debbie: Interesting. That’s a reprint of the Post story. Working around the paywall?
piratedan
@kindness: maybe there’s still a position for her at Wells Fargo opening up unneeded accounts? It still impressive (sadly) that the GOP spin machine is so quick to react in defense of its own. the WaPo gets a truly well sourced pattern of reprehensible behavior out there on candidate Moore and 24 hours later they’re hard at work with marching orders to smear the Post’s reputation… we get O’Keefe and SMOTI linked up… just makes me wonder who is the puppet master… its good for us that the tools are so incredibly warped, but the fact that they have so many at their disposal is daunting.
Roger Moore
@mouse tolliver:
Because they aren’t native American speakers. SATSQ.
Roger Moore
@Johnny Gentle (famous crooner):
You can keep getting funding for a long time by collecting just one liberal scalp. O’Keefe got two I can think of, so he’s good for a long time yet.
nominus
@debbie: As luck would have it, opportunities come along right when people might need them…
Major Major Major Major
@Yutsano: Syndication, probably.
kilo50
@piratedan: My guess is Bannon. Only he has the proper lack of concern regarding the truth, the belief in chaos theory, and the willingness to feed a naive schmuck into the wood chipper with a certain sense of glee.
Brachiator
@jl:
Politics has always been horrible, and some of the past crap that has gone down in US history would make your skin crawl. But good people have also fought against it, and will continue to do so.
That’s about the best you can ask for.
clay
I’ve long thought that journalists should be willing to burn sources that lie to them in bad faith. Looks like WaPo should reached the same conclusion. Maybe other outlets will follow their lead?
hueyplong
@TenguPhule: “And look how fast they started the ratfucking, she started her pitch the DAY AFTER the Moore story broke.”
It seems like proof that the GOP, all the way down to O’Keefe, knew all about Moore well ahead of the first story and had a plan, however ridiculous, in place, ready to be implemented.
Bill Arnold
@chris:
Out of curiosity, looked and project veritas says:
Which is mind boggling, but suggests that a similar left-aligned 501(c)3 organization could do analogous work. Does anyone know of any such that one could donate money to?
Roger Moore
@feebog:
He has no experience with actual journalism. He only knows how the Conservative propaganda mill works, and he assumes that MSM like the Post is just the liberal equivalent. This is what happens when you believe your own bullshit.
Trentrunner II - Pie Is Squared
The problem, as a WaPo reporter pointed out, is that the RWMN won’t present the part of the story–THE story, actually–of how this ratfucking was totally prevented/discredited.
Instead, they will spin it as a “revealing investigation,” omitting that they got caught/stopped, and it soon will be legitimized, repeated, and become part of their history. Trump himself will probably refer to it soon in some way, our era’s final stage in the time-honored pukefunnel process.
James Hare
@smintheus: Gotta send a message to future asshats.
Pharniel
Veritas law firm is very displeased with this.
“Veritas Law Firm would like to make it clear that not only are we not affiliated with “Project Veritas” but if anyone is looking to sue them, or O’keefe, we would love to help on a pro bono basis”
Cacti
I especially enjoyed how the WaPo burned the “source” of this story and disclosed all of her “off the record” communications.
germy
I’m curious about the person who accused Al Franken of inviting her into a bathroom. I’m fairly certain Franken denied that one.
A bizarre accusation, but I haven’t read much about it.
different-church-lady
@Major Major Major Major: I think we now have a better understanding of how easy it was for the Russians to reel these folks in.
Nancy
Lesson: Don’t mess with Martin Baron!
debbie
@Bill Arnold:
And this is why the IRS was investigating all the Tea Party groups that sprang up after Obama’s election. Turns out they were right to.
FlyingToaster
@Quinerly: Exhaustion. I’ve been afraid he’s going to end up blowing an aneurysm if he keeps this up.
And this way he gets to go out on a high note rather than, well, CurrentTV style.
Cacti
@germy:
Yeah, he flatly denied that one.
Roger Moore
@hueyplong:
I doubt it. This has all the hallmarks of something that was rushed into effect without thinking it through. If they had time to plan, they’d have an airtight story and would have had a chance to scrub the history of their purported victim.
sharl
@Johnny Gentle (famous crooner), @Hill Dweller: Yep, and O’Keefe and his backers tried to do that payment to the former ACORN employee vewy, vewy quietly. Wonkette doesn’t normally do original investigative reporting, but a couple of independent activists who were tracking O’Keefe at the time posted over there in 2013:
By the way, at the time O’Keefe punked EVERYONE in major media with this ginned up story, including the hip and totally “woke” Jon Stewart. It’s a case where having a staff with a diverse background might have saved those media people some embarrassment. Anyone who saw the way O’Keefe was dressed up in those videos, and who had come from a neighborhood where sex workers and their pimps worked the streets, would have probably laughed and said something like “What, are y’all fans of Starsky and Hutch reruns? LOL, these days real pimps don’t look like Huggy Bear!”
Mart
@debbie: As I recall, the only scalp the IRS got was a progressive group. The IRS did target groups with politically biased names, so that roped in lots of teatards. But none of them lost their exempt status, ’cause the RWNJ snowflakes scream louder.
randy khan
@Quinerly:
It’s hard to imagine KO’s retirement lasting very long.
Mart
@sharl: They pimp costumes were staged for Fox viewers, they never went into the Acorn offices dressed like that.
Cheryl Rofer
TenguPhule
@Roger Moore:
This has been true since 2008.
Baud
O’Keefe was a prelude to what we saw in the election last year on an international scale.
gene108
@mouse tolliver:
Russian bots, like a lot of foreigners hear “1000 dollars” and put the currency symbol at the end of the amount, just like we say it, so 1000$.
TenguPhule
@Cheryl Rofer: Not really, since they both work out of the same shop. Possibly quite literally.
Yutsano
@Mart: What happened is exactly what I expected to happen. The Tax Exempt/Government Entities division (TE/GE) suddenly got a spike after the Citizens United decision in these applications. They immediately asked for advice from HQ. They got no feedback, because they’re the rump end of the IRS. They asked an upper manager in DC. They even asked counsel. They got no response. So the managers there made up some rules in order to handle the overwhelming chaos. But the RWNJs got wind of a possible denial and made political hay out of it. And thus here we are.
jl
@debbie: @Mart: I heard news that the formal investigation of the issue showed no ideological bias at all, in who was on the list of suspects, who was investigations, how the investigations were conducted, or the results. And I think Mart is right, only group sanctioned was a liberal group.
So, another total BS Big Lie spread by reactionaries and GOP.
Amir Khalid
O’Keefe survives because what he does has value to his paymasters. He harasses people they want harassed, he works (ineptly, but every little bit helps) to set those people up and and make them look bad. Okay, so he gets caught out very easily, and sometimes he’s even punished by the law. He can call it persecution, and enough fools will believe him that he feels validated and emboldened to continue.
debbie
I’m seeing a new nickname for Trump on Twitter: Donny Dollhands. It matches up nicely with Bobby Three Sticks.
Major Major Major Major
@different-church-lady: “I would like to use my skills as a Spanish poetry translator to help spread the beauty of Pablo Neruda. I was laid off from my software engineering job a few months ago and came across the opportunity to change my career path.”
Cheryl Rofer
@TenguPhule: Ah, but the left hand may not know what the right hand is doing. The sad part is that if they’re both out of the same shop, we may never hear about it.
Jeffro
@Cheryl Rofer: This can only be made better if it happens in ‘open carry’ states. Go for it, boys!!
debbie
@jl:
Yes, as with most GOP investigations, it came to nothing.
Amir Khalid
There should be a liberal nickname for Project Veritas, methinks. How about Project Mendacium?
Shalimar
O’Keefe keeps coming up empty time after time because the liberal organizations he targets turn out to be staffed by honest, sincere people trying to help others. This is obviously not the world he grew up in, which raises the question of what would happen to an O’Keefe style sting operation aimed at the NRA, or Koch Foundation. His approach is so blatantly obvious that only a corrupt idiot would fall for it. Someone should test that theory.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Amaranthine RBG
By all means keep fucking that chicken re: NYT and the “Nazis are people too” article.
sharl
@Mart: O’Keefe’s ridiculous outfit worked with supposedly educated media types well beyond Fox’s angry and ignorant old white viewership. I don’t recall ANY major reporters or news outlets having their suspicions aroused. I used Jon Stewart as a case in point because he was/is viewed as a particularly smart and woke liberal commentator.
If I can find the link to Stewart’s original show segment where he bought into O’Keefe’s shit I’ll post it, as well as the bit a couple months later where he issued a mea culpa (though NOT an apology). Those old Stewart clips are now much more difficult to locate, thanks to what I assume are changes made by Comedy Central to its website in order to drive traffic to the current era of The Daily Show.
Cheryl Rofer
Matt
@Shalimar: The NRA is already publicly posting videos calling for armed insurrection – what on earth could they be talked into in a “sting” that’s worse?
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@sharl:
You could probably find the clips on YouTube.
dmsilev
I liked this detail:
We’ve got ourselves a real James Bond in the making here.
Mnemosyne
@Roger Moore:
To be fair to O’Keefe (gag), that’s exactly what happened with his ACORN story — supposedly reputable media outlets ran with it without bothering to do an elementary fact check. How was he to know that one or two outlets have managed to wake up to his scam?
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Matt:
They’ll never be happy until all us libtards and other undesirables are dead
sharl
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: That’s a good idea, though I haven’t tried it in awhile, and Comedy Central used to be pretty good about getting their content yanked from YouTube. If (as I surmise) they want to direct eyeballs to Trevor Noah’s current shows, CC would continue to be motivated to police YouTube in order to have that old content removed.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@sharl:
You could also do a general video search on Google. Plenty of other video services out there besides YT, like Dailymotion or Vimeo.
Gvg
@Amir Khalid: he also is harming his paymasters because people like me who aren’t cynical enough or experienced, learn about ratfucking being real, and become less gullible.
Mnemosyne
Also, this was great, old-fashioned legwork by the Post reporters: they basically staked out the offices of Project Veritas to watch for her to show up there.
Shalimar
@Matt: Making jokes about how gullible their members are, frisking people before meetings to make sure they aren’t armed, that sort of thing.
Major Major Major Major
@Cheryl Rofer: Like the apocryphal SDS group that consisted entirely of people on COINTELPRO’s.
kilo50
@Amir Khalid: That will work for me.
I really don’t think that O’Keefe’s clown show has to show a profit. Their existence will make legitimate progressive organizations keep a watch over their back. Keep them honest so to speak. But damn, somebody needs to keep a watch on the train wreck mendacious characters as well. some legitimate charges needs to be filed on their ass. make O’Keefe a three time loser.
Mike in NC
Anybody know of a connection between James O’Keefe and Steve Bannon/Breitbart? Seems like there was something prior.
Shana
@Chyron HR: I saw what you did there. Well played.
Tazj
@jl:
I agree with you that she was trying to say that he was entitled to due process. She was also said that he had done good things in Congress and in his life and that has bothered many in the media including some liberals. Vox had an opinion piece yesterday that stated that Nancy Pelosi’s interview on MTP was the reason women don’t come forward with claims of sexual harassment.
It was difficult for Pelosi to articulate the balance between the need to believe women and to ensure that people have due process. She's in a very difficult position because of the selective leaking and the Republicans know this. She has been made to answer for the non-disclosure agreements that exist in Congress while the Republicans have just skated by because no one knows anything else.
I agree with John Marshall from TPM, that he will probably be slowly forced out by the Democratic leadership.
Quinerly
@randy khan: it never does. Just wondering if anyone knew of a back story.
Aleta
Quinerly
@FlyingToaster: all as his ex Katy Tur’s star rises.
Origuy
@mouse tolliver:
Because there’s no ₽ character on their keyboards.
ETA: Nor apparently in the font used by Balloon Juice. That is supposed to be a ruble symbol, P with a line through it.
Cacti
@Tazj:
So the dudes at Vox blamed it on the she-beast Pelosi?
Where have I heard this story before? Oh yeah. Hillary was responsible for Bill being a cad because she never left him or some shit.
Schlemazel
@mouse tolliver:
interestingly enough “1000$” is how you would write it in Russian
Major Major Major Major
@Origuy: Shows up for me.
Tazj
@Cacti: Actually it’s a woman at Vox , Laura McGann.
mdblanche
@Nancy: This isn’t Baron’s first time dealing with a powerful cult that would stop at nothing to shield its pedophiles.
hellslittlestangel
By lying and deceiving.
Tazj
I can’t seem to link to the piece but it’s titled “Nancy Pelosi is that Woman” at Vox.
SFAW
@Droppy:
That may be the best explanation I’ve yet seen for O’Queeffe’s fuckery.
Mnemosyne
@hellslittlestangel:
You’d think someone with “research and fact-checking skills” would know how to spell.
Manyakitty
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: THIS
Origuy
@Major Major Major Major: Yeah, it shows up on my iPhone, too. Not on my work laptop, a Windows 7 with Chrome. I think MS hasn’t updated their fonts in a while.
kilo50
@Mike in NC: There is a connection, but it is murky. The money stream for both Bannon and O’Keefe are two dark money groups that get their disbursibles from the Mercers in the past. O’Keefes revenue for 2015 was a massive growth from before.
https://theslot.jezebel.com/james-okeefe-is-using-dark-money-to-run-his-pseudo-jour-1792061753
But Project Veritas’s own tax return shows that it relies more on sizable donations from wealthy individuals and institutions than small-dollar, grassroots support: of the $3.7 million in funding Project Veritas received in 2015, the overwhelming majority—nearly $3.1 million—was in contributions larger than $5,000. Eight donations were greater than $50,000; five were greater than $100,000; and two (including the DonorsTrust contribution) were greater than $1 million.
Major Major Major Major
@Origuy: Kinda weird, but not altogether surprising, that Windows would have iffy Unicode support.
Davebo
@debbie: O’Keefe was sued by an Acorn employee and had a $100,000 judgement awarded.
He’s now suing is insurance company for not defending him in other lawsuits.
Felonius Monk
I suspect that Jamie Phillips no longer works for O’Keefe’s organization. Even incompetents don’t want to employ incompetents.
jl
@Tazj:I generally agree, I would say, though that there is no ‘need to believe women’ I think there is a great need to protect any woman (edit: or man or boy or girl) who comes forward until there is credible evidence that the accusations are both false and made in bad faith. I think there is a subtle but important difference. Right now, things seems to be moving along as before where accusers can be defamed and it doesn’t even get much mention.
I agree that it is important that ‘people have due process’. What process is ‘due’ depends on the situation. For entertainers, i think the bottom line is what the public thinks. Might be unfair. Is it unfair that Louis CK’s ex-girlfriend now wants to gossip about his obsessions in their consensual relationship and that gets lumped into harassment? Probably, but too bad for him.
Think there is a bright line for public official and particularly elected public officials. Calling for resignations, based on vague public sentiment, or what seems right in the early stages of a story, or based on idiot babble by TV babblers, is dangerous. We can see from this the latest O’Keefe attempt at fraud that there will be bad actors who will try to game that. And regardless of what the elected official is done, his constituents need to have a say. What that ‘due process’ should be, I’m not sure, but needs to be some process. Which is why more attention should be given to sad excuse for process for Congress and fact that GOPers, until recently, have been making it worse. (Edit: ‘due process’ in sense of a criminal proceeding seems to be too strict for whether an official should stay or go IMHO.)
Roger Moore
@Major Major Major Major:
It isn’t bad Unicode support, per se; the problem is lack of the correct glyph in the font.
ETA: It’s still poor I18N, though.
debbie
@Mnemosyne:
I like the dueling purses.
debbie
@Davebo:
Good. May be soon become uninsurable.
Major Major Major Major
@Roger Moore: Sure, I meant “support for displaying unicode characters”, since I’m sure the computer “supports”
U+20BDjust fine.Patricia Kayden
@jl:
Why is it so hard for Democrats to push back on this? Franken’s misbehavior doesn’t negate his strong challenge of Sessions’ incessant lying. It shouldn’t be that hard to explain this to the American public in a coherent way. Democrats need to figure out how to express themselves so that they don’t end up squandering their opportunity to take back Congress next November. We need talking points.
gene108
@jl:
The public at large and especially the media cannot handle nuance.
You are either good or bad.
Someone accused you and you step down, you must be bad.
If you fight the accusations and win, you are good, because you won.
Republicans get this at a visceral level. They make things very black and white.
Makings black-and-white means you don’t have to stop and think about things and can get on with what keeps you occupied like hanging out with friends, binging watching shit on Netflix, antique shopping on Craig’s List, etc.
We also confer a certain moral authority on white male Republican Presidents, and by extension their Cabinet, so accusing one of wrong doing means you too must be pure of heart, mind and deed in all aspects of life.
sharl
@sharl: Still looking, but for those who weren’t around when O’Keefe’s original ACORN-attacking bullshit videos hit the news (via Fox), Rachel Maddow broke it down pretty well back in 2010 – Part I (9m5s) and Part II (3m13s).*
*h/t to Goku for the YouTube search idea. Didn’t find the Jon Stewart stuff I’ve been seeking there, but did find those Maddow segments.
MaryRC
@Cacti: I found that amusing too. Better start up another GoFundMe for the trip back home to Alabama, hon, you’re done.
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
Open thread? I blogged about Geoff Colvin’s claim that talent is less important than many people think in achieving expertise. As a writer who’s less good than I’d like to be, I find that comforting.
The Simp in the Suit
@mouse tolliver:
It’s a Russian thing.
MaryRC
@debbie: According to the WaPo article, one of the donors was Phillips’ daughter, effectlvely the final piece of evidence that confirmed the reporters’ suspicions. I find this hilarious.
gene108
@Patricia Kayden:
Most people do not do subtle in areas they are not well versed in.
For most folks this politics
An auto mechanic can tell me this part may fail, but the damage will not be bad, so it would not be worth fixing. For me, this is frustrating. All I want to know is will my car work or not. I don’t want a scale based on someone’s opinion that it will work now, but may fail later, but failing is no big deal, so don’t worry about it.
Politics is like me at an auto mechanic’s for most people.
Is what Franken did good or bad? Is what Roy Moore did good or bad? They are both bad, therefore they are both the same.
Major Major Major Major
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady): I was reading a thing the other day, about programming (but like so many things about programming it applies to writing too)–being good is 1% talent and 99% practice, but you do need that 1%!
schrodingers_cat
Snooze Hour Lolitics Monday report : Round faced giggle sister, Tamara Keith informed the audience that Rs trying to pass their horrendous tax cut is exactly like the Ds trying to pass ACA.
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
@Major Major Major Major: That makes sense to me. Some people can go farther than others, but I think most of us can get improve, thank goodness.
ETA: A thing I once read about expertise is that experts are better at turning an ill-structured problem into a well-structured one. They can take something amorphous (like reducing teen pregnancy) and turn it into a series of achievable steps. They also are better at identifying what kind of problem something is. Chess experts can look at a board and classify what they see.
Eric U.
@Felonius Monk: Phillips used her own name, seems like there would have been inconsistencies due to that. Of course, this star researcher probably didn’t bother to read the WaPo article to find out how thoroughly the paper had researched the other accusers.
Steeplejack
@kilo50:
Gotta close that link after you insert the URL. Instructions here.
Major Major Major Major
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady):
Pretty much the same in programming. Any idiot can lose at chess, after all.
This too is learnable, though.
frosty
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady):
It’s pretty to think so. As a guitar player struggling not to make mistakes on songs I’ve played for years, and having seen some amazing players at open mics, I’ve come to believe there’s such a thing as talent and in this endeavor, I don’t have it. I’ll keep hacking away at it though.
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
@frosty: Colvin looked at experts in various areas and they all worked unbelievably hard. The musicians, for instance, practiced for many more hours than average. Maybe it’s more accurate to say talent is clearly not enough. There is no magic.
Major Major Major Major
@frosty: I think it’s truer for some things than others. Music is probably one of the fields, along with reflex-heavy sports, that is most reliant on innate talent. On the other end of the spectrum is something like writing a novel. You need talent to identify the story and shape the characters and you need to have a knack with language, but without any understanding of the craft, that’s not likely to get you very far. For every Murakami book that’s good and written by dead reckoning, there are a thousand books that are bad and are written by dead reckoning, and those bad ones are far, far worse than any uninspired book written with a sense of craftsmanship.
TenguPhule
@Patricia Kayden:
You must be new to politics. And optimistic about the American public.
Roger Moore
@Major Major Major Major:
I’m not sure what that even means. How can talent be only 1% of success but also be absolutely necessary? That seems like a contradiction. It seems to me that the best way of thinking of it is that your talent (by which I mean inherent ability) sets your limits, but practice sets where you’ll wind up within those limits. The key is that in most fields, the difference between unpracticed and an ordinary person’s limit is much greater than the difference between an ordinary person’s limit and an exceptionally talented person’s limit, so practice is more important than talent. Talent only dominates in groups (like professional athletes) where everyone has practiced enough to get them close to their personal limit.
raven
@frosty: Great book with lots of info about music:
The Hand: How Its Use Shapes the Brain, Language, and Human Culture
sharl
Here’s a notice of a minor site maintenance thing, that seems like it might be an easy enough fix that someone with admin privileges – other than Alain – may be able to rectify…
In the B-J Lexicon there is a link for the “Cavuto mark” that redirects to the current (Trevor Noah era) homepage for The Daily Show. Apparently all the old Jon Stewart segment/episode links now do this. Links for those old segments are still available as far as I can tell, although it may take some effort to find them.
I found the new (functional) link for that hilarious 2006 segment:
So if anyone with sufficient admin privilege and know-how wants to edit the link in the Lexicon, there ya go.
eta: edited/fixed some stuff in this comment
Mnemosyne
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady):
I made my comment over at your site since I assumed that’s where you’d rather see it. ?
Ruckus
@Roger Moore:
It’s possible that if you were a bank and gave someone that much monetary credit, you’d be the one having gone bankrupt.
This chump has never had an airtight story, he doesn’t seem to understand the concept in the least. And the way he covers tracks is to draw big red circles around them.
Chyron HR
@Roger Moore:
A pearl is 99% oyster jizz and 1% a grain of sand, but you still need the grain of sand to get anywhere.
Kathleen
@Yutsano: It sounded to me at the time that the IRS was trying to develop some kind of process/template to handle the quantity and complexity of applications they were receiving because as you pointed out they got no guidance or support. I’m still infuriated at how the media pimped Reich Wing puking points about “targeting Tea Party”.
Kathleen
@Amir Khalid: And he is aided and abetted by the Mainslime Media who deem his escapades valid “stories”. He should only be covered in the context of being a rat fucker.
Major Major Major Major
@Roger Moore:
Well, the whole rest of your paragraph does a great job of explaining what it’s supposed to mean. Do you really not understand phrases like that?
ETA Chryon got it
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
@Mnemosyne: Ooh. I’ll go look.
raven
@Roger Moore: A buddy of mine played D-1 Linebacker and then coached at several major schools. He knew Matt Stafford’s mom through business and he told me when Matt was a junior in high school that he would be the #1 draft pick in the NFL because of his innate ability to throw the football. No amount of practice could make someone into that.
Ruckus
@Amir Khalid:
It doesn’t really matter if he gets caught out. By the time that happens the story is old news and all the new, fresh bullshit has been spread to freshen up the smell. Their “customers” don’t care if it’s bullshit, it sounds good the first time, it gets repeated and no one ever hears about how it is all made up or that he’s a rat fucker.
Story on page one, correction on page 23 of the metro section.
Major Major Major Major
@Mnemosyne: @Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady): No fair, Mnem stole my idea! (I realized a bit ago I should move over there too lol)
sharl
TenguPhule
@sharl: Yep. We really shouldn’t have to expect our opponents to be doing these things. That we have to speaks for how much trouble this country is actually in.
TenguPhule
@Ruckus: The lie runs around the world before the truth can get its boots on.
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
@Major Major Major Major: I get very excited when someone comments on my site. I am so easy.
Mnemosyne
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady):
I have a (mostly defunct) site, so I know how exciting it is to get an actual comment. ?
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
@Mnemosyne: I answered you. Does the site send you my answer?
Ohio Mom
@Mart: The sad epilogue of the IRS / Tea Party story is the IRS was sued by Tea Partiers and the Tea Partiers won. I wish I knew how to link but Google “IRS settles Tea Party cases for millions and an apology”. It’s in the Oct 26, 2017 Cincinnati Enquirer.
More proof that this remains an unredeemed world.
Ruckus
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady):
It’s called in some circles, looking at the big picture. Trying to see how the pieces fit together. I think a lot of people can do this but most are trained to look at specific issues and miss out on the overall concept of something. 2+2= what is a specific issue. Solve for x where x=z+4-a*b/c requires more than just memory, it requires specific skill in looking for the information, finding out the variables and the order of the process. And of course that’s just in math, how about organizing a group of 10,000 people into a coherent operating system. HR by the way is usually bad at this because they need to reduce the specific needs into standard structure and that often as not fails, simply because it is structured without regard for variables.
Mart
@sharl: What I meant about the 70’s pimp costumes is that they were more like the opening show credits to draw white people’s eyeballs. Even idiot O’Keefe had enough sense to dress normal for the Acorn office “stings”. Also too, just remembered he is a sexual assaulter per his former associate – Nadia Naffe. (Unfortunately the judge dropped her charges as he said did not have jurisdiction.)
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
@Ruckus: That makes sense. Rather than getting lost in details, you see them as part of a system or in relationship to one another.
Ruckus
@Roger Moore:
Bingo.
I think the 1% may be off but let’s say it’s not. Someone with 2% talent has 100% more, it isn’t a large difference on the face of it but it can work wonders having 100% more than someone else.
I know of a case from my professional sports days. A competitor, who was/had been at the top of the game was talking about someone who seemingly could out perform him without regard to physics, practice or any normal way. This person could do things a talented, practiced individual had no understanding of. I can do the things this champion could do, but on a very reduced level. This person could do things the champion could not imagine. I have, say 1/4 of 1% talent in that field. The champion has 1%, or four times mine. The outperformer has say 2% or a hell of a lot more than me, or 100% more talent than the champion. I can play, the champion can obviously win, and the outperformer can be out of shape, hung over and still is superior. It isn’t the absolute amount of talent, it’s the relative amount. Also the outperformer could be handled when an event went too long, the practice, the conditioning won out over the talent.
frosty
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady): True about practice. I don’t put nearly enough focused time at it, but then again I’ve still got a day job that requires too much (unpaid) overtime.
frosty
@raven: “The Hand” looks interesting, I’ll have to find a copy – I really like these kinds of books.
Ruckus
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady):
Exactly.
cain
@feebog:
The only way to stop project veritas is to ratfuck him right back. Get another organization who can slime his ass back to the salted pig sty he rose out of as fertlized pice of shit that gained consciousness.
sharl
My obsessive quest bore fruit (eventually), thanks to the Search feature at the Comedy Central website.
From Sept. 15, 2009, the segment titled “The Audacity of Hos” (6m21s), where Stewart and his crew pretty much bought into the Fox-broadcasts of O’Keefe’s bullshit ACORN sting. Contrary to what I stated earlier, it’s not clear that the absurd pimp outfit fooled Stewart – though that, and the fact that Fox was so gleefully broadcasting it all, should have at least made them suspicious – but The Daily Show crew clearly bought what O’Keefe was selling with his highly edited video recorded inside ACORN offices.
From Jan. 27, 2010, the segment titled This Is Spiteful Tap” (4m47s), where Stewart mostly talks about O’Keefe’s subsequent shenanigans in then-Senator Mary Landrieu’s office in Louisiana, where he and his chums were busted. The bit on the granting of assumed honesty on O’Keefe’s part starts at around the 2:50 mark, with Stewart’s playful mea culpa starting just beyond the 3:15 mark.
I may have been too hard on non-Fox, non-Daily Show media, who aren’t shown in Stewart’s or Maddow’s clips even covering this story. My recollection is that they bought into it as well, but I’m not going to try looking for the relevant clips. I just remembered being very disappointed that Stewart got punked.
sharl
@Mart: Ah, thanks. Just saw your response after posting my latest/final comment on this.
Bill Arnold
@Shalimar:
I would donate money to a 501(c)3 organization that promises to do this (stings targeting the radical right) well. Particularly once it developed a track record of successes. (Panama Papers and Paradise Papers represent another active and useful approach.)
jsrtheta
@debbie: Oh yeah, and he’s paid out a fortune.
jl
@gene108: OK. I’d get a little angry if I were Franken and say “I don;t understand what you mean. Are you suggesting that the allegations against me for improper behavior with women justifies Session’s repeatedly inaccurate testimony before the Senate? The one has nothing to do with the other. I think your question is ridiculous, if that is what you were suggesting.”
Is that too complicated?
theflax
@sharl: Jon Stewart fell for a lot of right-wing nonsense: the IRS scandal, John McCain being a maverick, Mike Huckabee caring about the poor, the buggy rollout of the ACA website meant that Democrats were just as worthless as Republicans but worse, etc. Plus he still complains that Obama didn’t use his magic powers to Fix Everything.
In short, Jon Stewart is an idiot who liberals should never have held in high esteem.
sharl
@theflax: Oh man, the sucking up to right-wing pols, especially McCain; that’s coming back to me now.
I think more highly of Stewart than you, but I take your point. He drifted well into pox-on-both-houses territory in his later years on TDS. He may have always been like that, and perhaps it wasn’t so obvious in the Bush years (at least not to me). Live and learn I guess! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
sharl
The following tweet has attached to it images of 2016 tax filings made on behalf of O’Keefe’s Project Veritas:
That org has been raking in steadily increasing amounts since 2012, from just over $738K back in 2012 to over $4.8M in 2016. Known donations on the order of $10K from the likes of the Trump Org. and $10-30K from Peter Thiel don’t come close to accounting for this kind of money.
My curiosity about who’s paying this twerp’s way grows stronger…
Duane
@sharl: Thanks. I was shocked how quickly a bus hit Sherrod. Another moment when I knew the lousy bastards had declared war on us.
Procopius
@debbie: Not clear to me what they could be sued for in this case.
Procopius
@smintheus: Too rare.
germy
Dupe70
@debbie: They have. And Project Veritas had to sue their insurance company to get their lawyer fees covered: https://www.buzzfeed.com/stevenperlberg/james-okeefe-is-fighting-his-insurance-company
The Gray Adder
@TenguPhule: And those donors would include the 45th President of the United States.