Thanks to the Russian government’s wildly successful 2016 effort at shoe-horning their asset into the Oval Office, we can all expect a metric shit-ton of disinformation to rain on our heads from now to election day 2020.
Every other bad actor — foreign and domestic — will jump on the disinformation bandwagon for fun and profit. They’ll divide us by race, gender and ideology at every turn.
I also expect them to get more sophisticated in their methods, with less crude and obvious messaging and more deliberate and effective media manipulation techniques.
Sometimes, the incident that kicks off a shit-storm might not even be deliberate or in the service of any particular agenda — it could come in the form of regular old “let’s you and her fight” fuckery and/or incompetence from horse-race focused media outfits.
Here’s a possible example of the latter from The Jolt, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s “political insider” blog:
Klobuchar’s ATL fundraiser raises hackles among Stacey Abrams supporters
Newly announced Democratic presidential candidate and blizzard survivor Amy Klobuchar, the U.S. senator from Minnesota, has a fundraiser in Atlanta on Friday at the home of Gordon Giffin, the former U.S. ambassador to Canada.
Many supporters of Stacey Abrams are expressing private displeasure…
One national Democrat operative with deep ties to Georgia, who didn’t want to be identified by name, criticized Klobuchar for holding her first event in the state with “Georgia’s old guard of failed Democratic moderates.”
“If you’re running for president and making your Georgia debut, you embrace Abrams, you embrace the new Democratic voter coalition and you don’t treat the state like an ATM,” the operator said.
The AJC blog post was tweeted by Politico’s Daniel Strauss, where it generated outrage at Klobuchar’s apparent snub of Abrams. Only it now looks like it’s 100% bullshit. Abrams’ former campaign manager responded to Strauss’s tweet:
.@staceyabrams is meeting with @amyklobuchar when she's in Atlanta this weekend, working on the scheduling. Stacey is meeting with any D pres candidate who asks, schedule permitting. https://t.co/ENoDRH1jyg
— Lauren Groh-Wargo (@gwlauren) February 21, 2019
Small tempest in a tiny teapot, and maybe this was a case of jumping the gun rather than malicious disinformation in service of an agenda. But this is the type of crap we’ll need to be on the lookout for in the coming days. I don’t think we’re equal to the task.
Eric U.
I’m trying to ignore it all. Blood pressure is high enough already with trump
karensky
I need to get back to reading deeper when tempted to love or retweet
schrodingers_cat
Binder throwing Amy with the bowl cut is a big yawn. May be she is generating these controversies to be in the news.
ruemara
Good to know, because it was pissing off black people.
Yarrow
I disagree. The shit funnel of info comes really fast so it’s hard to check everything but when something gets attention it’s being fact checked pretty quickly. I’m glad to see Stacey Abrams’ campaign manager correct the record.
This sort of pitting Dems against Dems this early is just stupid. Tobie had some insight into Daniel Strauss in a comment two threads below:
Joe Falco
Manufactured bullshit from a so-called Dem “operative” and a quick trigger to gin up outrage over actual reporting. Bad move, AJC
piratedan
well considering the political climate and the size of the tent that we all inhabit, I’m not surprised that people have gravitated to corners within the tent and are looking askance at folks in other corners…. especially since there are so many folks on the outside of the tent trying to piss inside of it.
I’m going to be keeping a big picture focus and keep track of receipts and try to make sure that I give more emphasis on what candidates actually do rather than what other people say that they do.
Omnes Omnibus
It’s already done its damage. People who want to knock Klobuchar will now just say that Klobuchar was forced into meeting with Abrams. Well done, AJC and Politico.
Doug R
But how does it affect Bernie™?
West of the Rockies
Yes, this “story” was presented here yesterday and induced some ire. I’m now glad I did not participate.
Villago Delenda Est
I trust no one at the rethuglican nest that is Politico to not engage in ratfucking. Strauss is on the tumbrel manifest.
NobodySpecial
Klobuchar has gotten way too much hate for her actual position in the race as it stands, currently, and it started right before she announced. I found that puzzling then, and even more so if it’s from Wilmer’s camp. Someone must be terrified. Why?
JPL
The article was bullshit. It mentioned that former Governor Barnes supported the other Stacey during the primary. When Abrams won, he supported her wholeheartedly. Guess what, I voted for Evans in the primary, although Abrams has now proven to be the stronger candidate. I hope that Abrams runs for Senate.
Buckle up because there is going to be a lot of bull printed, and we need to just focus on the prize.
Lapassionara
@karensky: I have a strict no politics rule on FB. It is a cesspool of misinformation.
debit
I think that anything of this sort needs to be automatically classified as fuckery and the source forever shunned and badmouthed. Someone was butthurt yesterday that we uniformly rejected his recommendation of following the Young Turks and said something to the effect “how was I supposed to know? I don’t read everything!” Well, know you know. Now hopefully everyone knows.
kindness
You know it’s bad when your Deadhead Facebook groups are coming apart at the seams. The rightwingers seem to think no one should be able to say a bad word about Trump. Of all the groups I wouldn’t have expected a shit storm from.
NotMax
What you mean by “we,” kemo sabe?
:)
Villago Delenda Est
@NobodySpecial: Wilmer, and his entire camp, consists of sacks of shit.
Yarrow
@JPL: Stacey Evans also immediately endorsed Stacey Abrams after the primary results were announced. It made headlines for “how a Democrat should do it.” She was a great team player. The whole story is total bullshit.
Jeffro
Fortunately, we don’t have to worry about Fox News dot com when it comes to spreading discontent between Dems. They’re way too busy focusing in on the most important story of the day…that’s right…the Jessie Smollett apparently-fake-attack story.
It’s their #1, #2, AND #3 story right now. (#4 and #5 aren’t the imminent release of the Mueller report either, in case you were wondering)
They really are a self-perpetuating White Outrage Machine, aren’t they?
Kent
What is the solution? I really have no idea. But I think part of what will make a successful candidate is one who has the ability to command one’s own media narrative and media stream. Say what you want about Trump. The man is a horror. But he has mastered the ability to command his own media narrative through twitter and his pipeline to the base AKA Fox News.
On the Dem side, AOC and Beto seemed to have the best command of their own media narratives. I don’t know if they are the model or what. Hillary Clinton did it poorly. Yes, she was swimming against a tidal wave of excrement. But still, her campaign just didn’t know how to punch through it.
I don’t know if anyone remembers the first Bill Clinton campaign in what? 1992? The documentary that came out about that campaign called The War Room showed how Clinton’s staff were just laser focused on constantly turning the media narrative back on the economy and his strengths despite all the constant “bimbo eruptions” and other distractions that kept cropping up, some of his own making, others not. That was a different time, pre-social media and internet. But I think the principles are the same. Whoever the candidate is in 2020, they had better have the world’s best social media team and had better be laser focused on message and rapid response in the same take no prisoners way. Position papers, policy proposals, all that kind of stuff is going to take a back seat to media messaging. Like it or not, that is the world we now live in.
We simply can’t do what the Kerry campaign did in 2004 and the Clinton campaign did in 2016 which was hunker down and wait for the media gatekeepers to play fair on garbage like the Swift Boats or Bengazi, or emails or whatever.
Fair Economist
I just want to point out the mechanisms of opinion manipulation:
This is a necessarily true statement. *Of course* *some* of Abrams’ MILLIONS of supporters are going to disapprove of Klobuchar coming – some don’t like her, some think it’s too early, some think it will distract people from local issues, some think Klobuchar looks too much like their mom, some think Klobuchar doesn’t look enough like their mom, etc. The statement is, for that reason, meaningless.
But what’s another statement, equally true, but tellingly not made?
This is true too! Again, *some* of Abrams’ MILLIONS of supporters are going to think Klobuchar has great policy interests, that she has a great media image, that she’ll bring national attention to local issues, that Klobuchar looks enough like their mom, that Klobuchar looks different enough from their mom, etc.
The choice of one of these meaningless and uncontestable statements is a blatant attempt to manipulate what people think. Even the choice of both can be blatant manipulation if they are not equally common; see climate change. People’s belief intensities are based mostly on ease of recalling. The more it’s said the more people will believe whether or not it’s true. And the manipulator hides behind the “factual truth” of the statement.
A great example of the basics of opinion manipulation – selective reporting of irrelevant facts.
Betty Cracker
@schrodingers_cat: Hate on Klobuchar if you must, but she objectively does NOT have a bowl cut.
The Moar You Know
They’ve been doing it for a long time. We can either fight fire with fire or go under. The choices in this election, both for the country and the Dem party’s way forward, are very stark and some of what we’re going to need to embrace and condone is not going to sit well with anyone.
The days of being able to pat yourself on the back for “going high” are over. This is “fight for your life” time.
ETA: that stinking pile of shit from the AJC is a deliberate hit job and is a tiny example of the tidal wave of lies and smears we’re about to get buried under.
PaulWartenberg
hate to distract, but we’re gonna need a separate thread for Peter Tork’s passing. :(
Kay
There’s no downside to being wary, so we should do it. The worst thing that happens if you have a suspicion it’s manipulated is you look at it more closely and find out more about it. That’s a plus, foreign government interference or not.
The only thing we have to lose is “instant outrage!” and “crazy pile-ons!” and those weren’t worth much anyway.
This could happen to us if we’re not careful :)
It’s pretty arrogant and most likely not true to exempt Democrats or liberals from falling for things like this. We have and we will if we don’t watch it. Be humble. We’re all trickable :)
Belafon
Does “Democrat operative” sound wrong in anyone elses ear?
Brachiator
At first I wanted to say that I so do not care about this kind of gossipy insider titter tattle bullshit.
But more than that there is stuff like this: Georgia’s old guard of failed Democratic moderates reads like bullshit deliberately tailored by the writer or someone to be provocative, dismissive and divisive. Am I supposed to be clutching pearls that some mythical group of progressives should have been invited? Or something.
Still, this whole crap, which I will soon forget about, sounds like someone writing about who was invited and who was snubbed at some debutante ball. It’s all bullshit. But I will note that I now have to be more on the lookout for pointlessly provocative crap from biased lefty asswipe pundits.
MattF
It’s a problem, but some information can be gleaned. The bot-masters are evidently betting that Harris will be the D nominee. And they are hoping that Bernie will be at least as divisive and self-absorbed as he has been to date, which is likely. And, entirely by coinkidence, Trump has the same hopes.
I’ll just note that history does not repeat itself. A once-successful strategy is just that and no more.
Yarrow
@Jeffro: Just a reminder that the Fox News Twitter account hasn’t tweeted since November 7, 2018. This thread goes into all the Fox accounts and it’s amazing how many of them have stopped tweeting. Here’s a tweet from the middle of the thread but click through to get the whole picture.
There has to be a court order around what’s going on here. There is no way all these accounts would stop tweeting for no reason.
Fair Economist
@Belafon:
Good catch. I wonder if Republicans use that as secret signal that “this piece is written by a pro-Republican opinion manipulator”?
Chyron HR
@NobodySpecial:
The greatest feeling of their lives was the months-long fit of psychotic rage against the ESTABWISHMENT CORONATED NEOLIBERAL (corporatist)WHOOOOOOOORE. They’re just chasing that high, man.
Kent
For Fuck’s Sake people.
Social media is a young person’s game as anyone who’s ever been around HS students knows.
Trump is a 72 year old moron who doesn’t know how to use email and can barely tweet coherent sentences. If he can beat us a SECOND time at what SHOULD be our game then we almost deserve to get beat.
This is where we should actually have an advantage give that most social media is basically free and not subject to the whims of big donors. It is different from say the old way of dumping $100 million into traditional TV ad buys in some local market.
trollhattan
You’re spot on, Betty. We’re hot to jump on the latest outrage du jour (if not du hour) and that tendency makes us suckers for disinformation, whether from Roger stone or Russia (but, I repeat myself).
So what’s the antidote? We surely can’t count on classic reporting, i.e., checking facts and sources before publishing/broadcasting.
MattF
@Yarrow: One possiblity is that the Fox powers-that-be took a hard look at the tweet responders and decided they weren’t going there. There are degrees of toxicity, and red lines that even Fox avoids.
eclare
@Belafon: Noticed that too.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@trollhattan: Social media reward being the first to post or share or retweet. Even here, we like to be first. That’s doesn’t encourage checking things out.
debit
@Kent: It’s not Trump that we’re worried about.
Kay
Because, if we’re honest, that’s part of our inability to recognize it, right? That’s what tricksters rely upon. The mark’s belief that he or she is too smart to be taken in. It couldn’t be used to manipulate LIBERAL movements or orgs because we’re so ultra-savvy and smart!
I just finished listening to a podcast about multi level marketing. To a man or woman every single mark says or said “this isn’t a ponzi scheme”. They know what they should be looking for! They just put themselves in a different category than the 100 million people who fell for it before. They’re better. Uniquely better, really. Extraordinary.
MattF
@Dorothy A. Winsor: The ‘reward’, though, is entirely imaginary. How does that work?
Yarrow
@MattF: Doubt it. They’d make a big deal about it and take down the accounts if that were the case. Then probably put them up again in a big show. Get some publicity around it. The tweets stopping happened without notice or comment from Fox.
Should be noted that the Fox News account shut down just hours after Rupert Murdoch visited Mitch McConnell in his Senate office.
trollhattan
@Fair Economist:
In 2019 “true” Republicans can’t quite leave the boat and there will be a tell at some point.
Speaking of, Erik Fvcking Erikson was on my radio this morning proclaiming his newfound love for Donald Trump, evidently because his church members were mean to his kids or something. What a waste of human flesh.
A Ghost To Most
And the ratfuckers seize another news cycle.
Focus. FTR, I like Harris, since Schiff is busy.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@MattF: Attention. Social interaction.
MattF
@Yarrow: “The people who respond to our tweets are psychopaths.” I don’t see Fox Inc. admitting that.
Barbara
When you see sentences like, “Many Stacy Abrams’ supporters,” you should just stop reading. What does “many” mean, exactly? Basically, it means nothing but conveys whatever you want it to. Many people hate ice cream. Many people have committed sex offenses. Many people have never been on an airplane. None of it means anything. I also will not read anything that has “might” or “could” in the title or first paragraph. Basically, that telegraphs that there is no news, just that it’s a low news day that caused someone to bring out their canned BS speculation on this or that.
Cacti
We’re just getting started in what is likely to be the longest and most wide open Dem primary of our lifetimes. Some elbows will be thrown and some feelings will be hurt along the way. But let’s not forget that in the end, we’re on the same team.
Except for Wilmer, who wants to use our team’s time, money, and resources without actually joining it. Screw that guy.
schrodingers_cat
@Betty Cracker: It looks like a hybrid between a bowl cut and a bob to me.
Betty Cracker
@Kent: But it wasn’t really Trump who orchestrated the social media manipulation campaigns in 2016 — it was a strategy on his behalf conducted by professionals.
randy khan
When I first read the story, it seemed kind of peculiar – Abrams supporters expressing outrage at a candidate doing a fundraiser at the home of someone who supported another candidate in the primary. I mean, really, it’s a big yawn even if Klobuchar wasn’t trying to meet with Abrams.
That said, the bigger picture question i have is whether big ticket fundraisers (which are crucial for the party, if not necessarily for individual candidates these days) are going to become an issue in the Democratic primaries. Bernie got a lot of traction the last time around about his small dollar fundraising, stupid though it was. (It was stupid, in part, because Clinton had a lot of small donations, too – by the end of the campaign she raised about 35% more from under-$200 donors than Sanders, although obviously she had a general election campaign that Sanders didn’t have – and Sanders raised more than half of his money from people who gave $200 or more.)
MattF
@Barbara: Right. Also anonymous attribution is a bad sign, although they all do it.
debit
@schrodingers_cat: Minnesota Mullet.
Yarrow
@Barbara: The real problem was the tweet that took that story and made it sound like Klobuchar deliberately snubbed Abrams. Which was completely false. I just skimmed Daniel Strauss’s timeline and did not see a clarification or correction, so it seems he’s happy with what his above tweet. Asshole.
Public service announcement: Do not trust Daniel Strauss or retweet him without checking his work. He’s proved himself to be a ratfucker.
Leto
From Maddow last night:
Democrats see return of divisive social media manipulation
It was a good piece and basically talks about how Russia is already ramping up operations, specifically looking to sow discord among Harris, Warren, Wilmer, and Beto personnel. Though as we progress I’m sure there will be more attacks against all of them.
Ryan
“One national Democrat operative”
The problem is that they are so stupid and out of touch, having lived so long in their media ecosphere, they can’t convincingly do any of this well. Anyone not a part of that sphere would have said “Democratic operative.”
West of the Rockies
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Very good point.
trollhattan
@Barbara:
That’s exactly how Trump couches everything: “People tell me…” at some point followed by “Believe me…:”
Jay
Given all the cases of so called “journalists” getting caught fabricating stories, and in some cases, a whole career,
If the story cites an “unnamed source”, no matter the reason, ( not authorized by the CPD to talk to the media), then it’s at best gossip, made up or shit stirring.
“Reliable Sources” in politics, go on record.
oatler.
@Belafon: There were news stories about GWB using “democrat” instead of “democratic” in his speeches as a sign of ignorance or contempt, and now it seems to have entered mainstream rhetoric. Better than demon-rat, I guess.
Yarrow
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I think people must get some sort of dopamine hit from outrage or something. People sure are quick to jump on the outrage bandwagon. Sure, there’s lots of terrible stuff happening but let’s not invent more of it.
West of the Rockies
@schrodingers_cat:
Still, it’s her hair and she gets to do as she wants with, just like Maxine (who idiots call James Brown) or even dreadful Wilmer.
MattF
@oatler.: Soshalist demon-rat, if you please.
cope
(Tenor of some of these comments) X (20+ months)…carry the 7, multiply by…and yes, we have liftoff.
I have never been happier that I am a non-adopter of any social media.
As Mr. Pierce says, “Play nice ya bastids.”
Kent
@Betty Cracker:
No argument with that. I’m just saying that there’s always excuses for why we lose. The electoral college is tilted against us. Citizens United lets the billionaires buy elections, White people are racist and sexist. And so forth.
The field is ALWAYS going to be tilted against progressive candidates. It is never going to be “fair”. That is the world we live in and has always been the world we live in. If we can’t master what is essentially free social media (which should be the domain of the young) then I don’t know what to say. I think the 2020 campain that best understands and knows how to master it will succeed. Obama’s 2008 campaign was light years ahead of the field with their online organizing, phone apps, and all the stuff they did. The campain that knows how to take this to the next level in 2020 is the one to follow. I don’t know who that will be. But I know one thing for certain, it won’t be Sanders or Biden.
MattF
@cope: I gave up on Twitter a while ago. It’s really all about accumulating followers– and why should anyone care about that?
FlipYrWhig
@randy khan: The subtext was that Klobuchar was revealing herself to be a cluelessly un-woke establishment white moderate. Seems like rather a lot to draw from a person going to an event where another person *wasn’t*.
@Barbara: My favorite recent use of this thought process was from my most diehard friend-ish BernieBro on Facebook who was *delighted* that even though Amanda Marcotte had said something about Sanders supporters being affluent and white, working-class people of all races were dunking on her on Twitter about how much they loved Bernie. Number one, Twitter, ergo, inherently tempest-to-teapot ratio wildly out of whack. Number two, sample size. Number three, confirmation bias. Number four, are they even telling the truth in the first place? This guy, my sorta friend, has multiple advanced degrees in the humanities. He teaches students to be careful with sources. Nevertheless, he is a fucking idiot and inveterate shit-stirrer in *exactly* the ways that the social-media “left” is always fucking idiots and shit-stirrers. He WANTS to stir shit, and he WANTS to have his shit stirred, apparently. I find it at once hard to believe and all too easy to believe.
Brachiator
@Leto:
The government and political parties have not developed ways of blunting this? Also, no concerns about China?
Barbara
@Yarrow: More and more, I see twitter as basically useless at best and positively harmful. Sure, I can get my traffic updates if I follow the news radio station on twitter, but then, I can also just look at Google maps. The only reason I affirmatively use twitter is when I am trying to follow something like a speech or debate that I can’t watch and someone is trying to live tweet about it. But then, the Guardian UK often does a live commentary on the same events (think state of union address) that is usually better done. I doubt if Twitter will ever break free of its limitations.
Kent
@oatler.:
You even hear it on NPR on occasion from people who should know better. From my point of view, if you don’t know the fucking difference between a NOUN and an ADJECTIVE then get off my radio. It makes you sound like a fucking hillbilly. The local NPR reporters in Waco TX used to do that. Every time I heard it I would write a scathing email to the station director saying “can’t you fucking hire people who understand English grammar? I am just embarrased for them”
Kay
If Klobuchar wants to pick up polling points she’ll work on this accent. Forget the hair. This is the thing. She’s technically not in the range but if you want to hear it go listen to the (Democratic) Michigan governor. She has it. The Northern Cities Vowel Shift:
Barbara
@FlipYrWhig: My response to someone who said something like that is that almost by definition, people responding on Twitter are not working class. Oh sure, I could be wrong, but ummm, I don’t think so. You can say whatever you want about your working class cred, not to mention your gender and ethnicity on Twitter. Who’s going to call you on it?
Brachiator
@Kay:
Inland Northern Hawaii?
Roger Moore
@Jay:
I think the problem is slightly different. It isn’t about what the sources do, it’s about what the reporters do. A reporter who just repeats what “reliable sources” tell them is a gossip columnist pretending to work in hard news. Good reporters will take what the “reliable source” tells them and use it as a starting point for an investigation that lets them publish based on real, on-the-record information. When you see the good reporter’s story, you can see all the information with sources they’re allowed to share, but you don’t necessarily see the off-the-record information that got them started.
MattF
@Kent: A little history of the snub. Not surprised to learn that old Noot had something to do with it.
Zelma
I’m not totally sure that civilization, let alone democracy, can survive the internet.
Human beings seem to be predisposed to believing conspiracy theories especially in uncertain times. Remember the Great Fear. Historians have offered numerous “logical” explanations for why it occurred, like ergot contamination of the grain supply. But I think that contemporary historians who have seen what happens on social media will be more likely to say, “People are just crazy and credulous.” And now the crazies have found each other. And are being manipulated by bad actors for fun and profit.
Abandon hope all ye who enter here.
Kay
@Brachiator:
No. Chicago! He really does. Michelle has it too, more so, actually, which makes sense. The Michigan governor has the extreme version- you could put her in a training video.
tobie
Thanks for this post, BC. I’ve been trying to follow this story since rikyrah posted a link to Daniel Strauss’s twitter feed last night, and there was quite a bit in the feed that cast doubt on his report. @NobodySpecial is right that someone seems scared by AK’s candidacy.
@schrodingers_cat: Are you being ironic? Sounds like a weird claim to make in diary on disinformation/innuendo/unsourced rumor. Anyhow, after the 2016 primary, general campaign, and Trump disaster, I’m happy to embrace boring. It’s a relief to me that you could wake up just about any Democratic Presidential candidate at 4 am and ask them about patent law and they would have tons of well-informed things to say.
GregB
I think everyone needs to ultra conscious about the cascade of ratfuckery coming down the pike.
Jay
@Yarrow:
Yup, studies show that outrage, fear and anger provide neurochemical hits to part of the brain and the lizard brain, and it is highly addictive.
It’s the Faux News Model.
Ladyraxterinok
@oatler.: I remember reading ‘Democrat’ was used deliberately to emphasize, reinforce idea dems are rats. It wasn’t accidentally done, it was deliberately done.
Immanentize
@Kent:
Don’t come into the morning thread with that attitude, son….
Kent
@Ryan:
For that matter, when is the last time you actually heard the term “democrative operative” used by an actual Democrat? At least without a note of scorn or derision? That’s some sort of media term used to describe the Mark Penns and Donna Braziles of the world. Or frankly any bitter old has-been with vaguely Democratic roots who wants to pontificate on background. WTF is an “operative” anyway? I don’t recall people like Obama ever using the term “operative” to describe anyone.
Ladyraxterinok
@Ladyraxterinok: Read this at the time it was 1st being used.
glory b
@Kent: I heard that this started under Gingrich. He had some media/pollster type tell him that if you say “Democrat” instead of “Democratic” and keep the emphasis on the last syllable, it leaves the word “rat” as the last thing people hear and will leave a feeling of discomfort.
That’s why ALL Repubs never say “democratic” and no one ever corrects them.
Kent
@MattF:
I know the history. That’s why I refuse to abide it and have a gut instinct to dismiss anyone who uses it. It is especially prevalent among mainstream media types in the south who should know better and I think they just do it anyway in some sort of lame attempt to sound “fair and balanced” or something.
Kay
@Brachiator:
The wiki article I just skimmed says it started with lower class women, which fits with my anecdotal observation because better-educated and more kind of “worldly” people have a milder version. They get around more. They talk to more people without it. So O’s is “mild” but you can still hear it.
Ladyraxterinok
@Kent: AOC seems to be using social media super effectively. Maybe she could teach classes?!?!
Immanentize
@Yarrow: I think that the reason it was such a successful comment is the same reason that all propaganda works — It started from a point of real evidence, or “truth” if you will. Klobuchar’s own campaign page is very thin (non-existent?) on issues of race. For “civil rights, she lists a bunch of very admirable work on marriage equality and trans-rights. And her criminal justice record lists supporting police and funding for law enforcement. So when you start out with, at best, a neutral record on race, it is easy to make even small things into her “record” on race.
FlipYrWhig
@Barbara: Also, in a big enough population, there are SOME of all kinds of types. What my sorta-friend is doing is just like Trump’s daftness about his rallies: “looks like a lot of people like me, dontcha think?” And he would never fall for it if someone on Twitter was, like, “I have a big beard and hang drywall for a living and I am all in for Hillary Clinton.” He would say, pfft, people will say anything. He knows how to be a skeptic — just not on this. He knows, just KNOWS, that all the good people with street cred support Bernie Sanders, and nothing is going to convince him otherwise. I find the whole thing gross, frankly.
schrodingers_cat
@tobie: Dana Houle has her number. I do not like binder throwing bosses who make their underlings do the dishes or pick up dirty laundry. YMMV.
Oh and I don’t like male bosses who do that either. I knew an advisor who made his grad students do chores for him like grocery shopping. Hard pass on shitty bosses.
ETA: Without all the negative press she is getting, AK would hardly be in the news. So my cynical mind went there. That she is not beyond manufacturing this drama. Its a theory, I have no proof. Yet.
FlyingToaster (Tablet)
I’m putting a list together of the media ratfuckers I need to respond to if I see them just after they tweet. Everyone associated with Politico will be added, as soon as I figure who they are.
Sources mean something. It’s past time to paint these slanting “journalists” with their yellow stripes. Nobody listens to Lou Dobbs but the crazy, scared olds; we need to point out, every damn time, that asshats like Daniel Strauss are lying sacks of shit, fit only for mockery.
MattF
@Immanentize: And, more to the point, to the ratfucker, ‘Stacy Adams supporter’ means AA Democrat. We all need, IMO, to get over any uneasiness about replying to that and calling it out as racist provocation.
Yarrow
@Immanentize: Agreed. Still, it’s important to remember who took the grains of truth and turned it into something that went viral. Daniel Strauss is not to be trusted.
A Ghost To Most
Via WaPo. Part of the soundtrack of my yoot.
Mandalay
O/T, but since the thread title is “The Gathering Shit-Storm” this looks like an excellent shit-storm in the making:
Ouch. Not looking good for the Republicans.
schrodingers_cat
@West of the Rockies: Sure, she does.
@debit: Stealing it for next time.
MattF
@Mandalay: Goes right into the ‘Republicans are lying shitbags’ folder. Is anyone being indicted?
John S.
@Ladyraxterinok:
She is teaching classes to her fellow congresspeople.
John S.
@Mandalay:
None of that matters. An actor fabricated being attacked by MAGAts, and the president is outraged.
That’s the only important thing right now.
schrodingers_cat
@tobie: Oh and I did not like the nasty crack AK made about HRC the day she launched her campaign either.
StringOnAStick
@Jeffro:
(Meaning FOX)
Yes, yes they are. I have two white guy examples of this and how it affects people. One is my elderly father, the Bircher winger from way back; loves his FOX, watches it all day. We have a strict “no politics” policy because he’s a screamer and I’m completely done with that, but I can tell when FOX is really pushing something, like when he kept bringing up Venezuela last month. Even with the “no politics” policy they had him so wound up he couldn’t not mention it.
The other white guy example is a 50 yo guy who seems like a big teddy bear but confides in me that he has a huge problem with anger and it is scaring him enough to start thinking about seeing a psychologist, though not enough to actually do it (yet; he’s a notorious procrastinator). I’d tell him to quit watching FOX all day long but he might stroke out right then and there or explode and end our friendship. I’m getting closer and closer to saying it though because I am growing tired of the whining with no action to deal with the problem.
Kent
@Kay:
So what are we talking here? Laverne and Shirley? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-PlT-sHRTE or is that something different?
Jay
@Roger Moore:
In Politics, there is politics. A Campaign Consultant who has something real to say, won’t be an “unnamed source”, they will be named. They know that saying what they said, isn’t going to cost them future contracts and in fact, might even get them more.
So, in regards to politics, ( not crime, etc), the only reason to be an “unnamed source” is for ratfucking and shit stirring.
In this day and age of the Internets, calling the unnamed source a Democrat Party Insider, ( there’s a tell right there), with out the reporter showing their work, it could just as easily be a Bernie Bro, ReThug ratfucker, Achmed from Sawdi Arabia, Ivan from St. Petersburg, Moshe from Israel or Lee Quan from China.
Until someone is willing to go on the record, treat it all as bullshit.
How many times in the past two years have “unnamed sources” told us that Meuller is closing up shop any day now?
Brachiator
@Kay:
Interesting. I would think that Obama in part deliberately crafted his accent. He adopted Chicago, but his grandparents were from Kansas and lived in Hawaii. I wonder what their accents were like, or his mother, of course.
Kay
@Mandalay:
It is amazing. It’s like the smoking gun in an election fraud case that everyone hopes for but doesn’t exist.
It DOES in this one. I think they have to recall the prior witnesses who defended Harris and insisted he didn’t know back, because it looks like some of them were lying. They might have been. They’re all horribly cowed and scared and caught up in this crime and they were getting 200 dollars a batch of ballots or whatever.
opiejeanne
@MattF: And yet there’s a story that appeared yesterday about the candidates being victims of disinformation campaigns, and initially it listed 3: Harris, Warren, and O’Rourke. About halfway down the article it includes Wilmer, but only disinformation against the two women is included in the article. I know there has been some against Beto, but Wilmer? He’s the most likely beneficiary of disinformation, and every story I’ve seen against him has been a retelling of facts that are easily checked.
The story was picked up and retold in shorter form by another magazine, and Wilmer was included in their version right at the beginning as a victim.
Barbara
@Mandalay: His testimony also makes it clear that Harris and his campaign manager were lying when they said that no one had ever warned them that the Dowless operation might have been illegal. There is actually an email between father and son discussing a complaint that Dowless brought against a Democratic consultant, and the gist of it is the father telling the son that Dowless was complaining because he thought he should be the only one who could get away with doing stuff like that. OMG. Totally damning. A person with integrity would withdraw his candidacy but I won’t hold my breath.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@StringOnAStick: You could suggest he stop watching politics in general. Maybe suggest a couple of channels he’d like better. Cooking stuff. Or sports. Or home remodeling. Or movies
MattF
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Or find a friend. And not a Fox Friend.
Kay
@Brachiator:
I sort of suspected that too. I forgive him for it because he chose Chicago as his political proving ground and it would help, it really would. He might just be a mimic too. There are people like that. They pick up whatever the accent is.
tobie
@schrodingers_cat: And do we know if she “threw a binder” or “tossed a file in exasperation”? Do we know if staffers began cleaning up after a reception or were asked specifically to do her dirty dishes? And do we know if she ordered a staffer to go the dry cleaner or if the staffer was already going there and said it would be no trouble to pick up an extra piece? We don’t know any of this. We don’t know what, if anything, happened, and what the context might have been. You’re trafficking in rumors. Today it’s AK. Tomorrow it could be KH. We really need to exercise vigilance when it comes to unsourced, uncorroborated attacks and memes.
A Ghost To Most
@Barbara:
He’s an evangelical minister, so this is a rhetorical question, I assume.
Jay
@StringOnAStick:
Suggest he take an Anger Management Course.
It will be an eye opener for him, not just because the biomechanics of anger are pretty simple and easy to turn off,
but mostly because 98% of his fellow classmates will be guys a lot like him who wound up going to jail because their anger got out of control and they are “court mandated” to be there.
Roger Moore
@Mandalay:
The big unspoken question is why this stuff was never reported before. Apparently everyone in the local Republican establishment knew there was an organized absentee ballot stuffing ring, but their only thought was about who was going to benefit from it. The never even considered reporting it to the relevant authorities or doing anything to stop it.
Immanentize
@MattF: @Yarrow:
Agreed. Agreed.
My goal is to presume good faith by every candidate until proven otherwise. That worked here. Sorry to say, however, Sanders has already, for me, proven otherwise.
Brachiator
@Jay:
Journalists use unnamed sources for all kinds of reasons. I don’t know why you keep asserting something which is not true.
There are even guides to understanding how unnamed sources are used. An example:
Kent
@Barbara:
Harris is a Baptist preacher from the Southeastern Baptist Seminary. Which was we know, from recent reporting from the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News, is an absolute cesspool of pedophiles rivaling the Vatican. Integrity? Integrity? They lost the right to use that word a LONG time ago.
schrodingers_cat
@tobie: If AK wins the nom, I will do everything I can including canvasing and voting for her, because a binder thrower is better than a pussy grabber. And the Minnesota mullet is better than the dead animal on the Orange One’s head. But she is not going to get my vote in the primaries.
ETA: The stories are too specific, and I said in the earlier comment, I trust Dana Houle, who I think is from the Midwest and has managed campaigns in Minnesota. I like KH but my mind is not yet made up about who I am going to support in the primaries.
StringOnAStick
@Yarrow: That’s important information, especially when you apply Adam’s comment about coincidence and enemy action. Thanks for remembering this and pointing it out.
Kay
@Brachiator:
Jane Marie has it. Michigan is a hotbed of multi-level marketing. I started thinking about it because I read the comments before I listened and there are a few people complaining about her accent. Not really “complaining”. Noticing.
And that’s how I got from there to this :)
Jay
@tobie:
??????
Dorothy A. Winsor
@opiejeanne: Adam posted some videos of Wilmer the other day in which he praises Castro’s Cuba, honeymoons in the USSR, and advises someone (the Contras?) how to fight the US. IOW all the dirt HRC declined to use. I wonder if that will be labeled “disinformation.”
Aleta
These are half formed thoughts, but I’ve been thinking about ways Rs will try to use (what they perceive as) individual weaknesses in each women candidate to split Dems into pain and anger. Not to focus on whatever the issue is in itself, but to generalize it into something broader, impossible to solve quickly, to hurt trust.
For one ex., we could prepare for them to try to *widen* the heated issue of Franken, by changing the actual debate (which is not what I’m talking about) into arguments over “the wrong turn sexual politics has taken,” “the overreach of prosecution,” “how accusations are handled,” “the difficulty of definitions,” “youthful indiscretions,” “intolerance!” “witch hunts!” It’s not hard to branch off into these connections, even in fair discussion, and any of it could take me into emotional debate. But I want to remember that they’ll manipulate this anger to divide and unfocus us during pre-election work.
It’s been done before with men’s war records. It will come up in new ways for each Democratic woman. It’s probably going to hurt, so I want to think about it ahead of time.
Mandalay
@Barbara:
Right. Mark Harris testified this morning but I think pleading ignorance is only making matters worse for himself after his son’s damning testimony and email evidence:
I don’t know what the criminal penalties (if any) might be for Mark Harris for lying, but he is clearly guilty of that. There’s no way that election result can stand now.
A Ghost To Most
that didn’t take long
Kent
@Kay: Yes….the DeVos family and Amway are the kings of MLM schemes in Michigan. That’s where Betsy DeVos got her billions.
Fair Economist
@Kay: That would just get endless lead stories about how inauthentic Klobuchar is along with sonograms on the evening news showing a shift in her pronunciation of “buses”.
WhatsMyNym
“Outrage” at perceived snubs is a waste of time in politics (government or business).
Sadly, Political reporters in the modern world are there to make money. Nothing else.
tobie
@schrodingers_cat: Maybe my point was unclear so let me state it directly: I’m not advocating for AK or any other candidate in the Democratic primary. I’m cautioning against peddling unsourced rumors like “binder thrower.” Coming up with nicknames like that has a kind of Trumpian flare: Lying Ted, Crooked Hillary, Binder Throwing Amy. You’re better than that.
Ruviana
@Betty Cracker: Thank you!
MattF
@A Ghost To Most:
Sounds… ambivalent. “I’d rather be wrong. But then, I’d be wrong about everything.”
Immanentize
@tobie: I do think Klobuchar’s decision not to deny any of the complaints suggests that they probably happened. Her, “I’m a tough boss” could have included, “but I never acted like That!” Again, the stories about her actions as a boss are credible because they seem to be based in some reality.
trollhattan
@schrodingers_cat:
I dunno, if those thrown binders were stolen from Romney and contain women….
schrodingers_cat
@tobie: BC and AL come up with such names too, as do many commenters. But I am Trumpian and they are funny. I should know my place and be polite like a good immigrant, amirite?
tobie
@Jay: Waving back in words because I don’t know how to type emojis.
jc
We must be cautious in dealing with the nihilist middle-finger-voters on the right. But we must also be tough — punch the shark in the snout. Trump is going to feast on lies for the next two years. Warren and Harris et al must call him out as the dirty rat he is. It’s very likely that Trump & Co. are literal traitors — you don’t respond to that with caution. You *destroy* them.
Dems need to play the “inquiring minds” game that Trump plays all the time: start pointedly asking rhetorically, is our president hopelessly compromised? Is he a puppet of our enemies? Hillary’s framing is as valid today as it was in 2016.
A Ghost To Most
@MattF: I give his “claims” all the credence due a Talibangelical.
Fair Economist
@Kay: You inevitably pick up pronunciation from where you go. I spent 7 years in Chicago 30 years ago and my son still mocks my pronunciation of short u.
tobie
@schrodingers_cat: What???
schrodingers_cat
@trollhattan: I loled! That’s funny.
Kay
@Kent:
It is. I liked the podcast because it isn’t judgmental. It’s disturbing how many people say “it isn’t a ponzi scheme because those are illegal”. Wow. They have a LOT of faith in regulation for such boot-strappers! Like there’s a whole army of people just really poring over those essential oil contracts and pre-qualifying them. We’re lucky if we can take poisoned foodstuffs off the shelves at this point. They might wanna beware.
JoeyJoeJoe
@oatler.: it way precedes W or even Gingrich. Even in 1976, Bob Dole used it during the VP debate. He referred to “Democrat Wars”.
schrodingers_cat
@tobie: I have never heard you call anyone else over here Trumpian for being sarcastic and biting. Perhaps you meant that I should be gentle towards D aspirants. I probably should. But AK’s entire persona reminds me of someone I knew. Who was a terrible boss and a human being but only people who worked for her knew. She presented herself entirely differently to the world. AK sets of those alarm bells for me.
You always have the option of ignoring my comments.
Doug R
Um, isn’t it a good thing when you are on good terms with former ambassadors (who also lived there for 17 years) to your closest friend and ally? I don’t think Stacey Abrams is going to be all that annoyed with someone who had a position in a previous Democratic administration, seeing as she didn’t mind Jimmy Carter’s help in her run for governor.
Immanentize
@Aleta:
Just repeating for truth.
Elizabelle
Meh. Myself, I just hope for fun and games when Roger Stone has his date with (crosshairs) Judge Amy Berman Jackson today at 2:20 p, if memory serves.
Rather hoping she throws his ass in jail. At least for a while. Stone, not free to roam or tweet. Sounds like a plan.
Bill Arnold
@The Moar You Know:
There are other approaches. Basically a particular [item of] disinformation goes viral/popular, or not. While it is doing so, it can be disrupted.
This means actively monitoring the places where such things are incubated and tested, recognizing them, and spiking them while young. There are people and groups that do this.
(Still reading the thread, so it may have already been said.)
StringOnAStick
@Jay: Excellent suggestion, thanks!
Kay
@Fair Economist:
You do but some people are more apt mimics than others. I wonder if it’s tied to being a good listener. You know when you’re talking to someone how you sort of adopt their speed and pattern? Some people do that more than others. Maybe “ingratiating” is the word. You want to match them. That would be very Obama-ish. Bridge-building.
Elizabelle
LOL. I love the top reader comment on WaPost story about Stone’s court date this afternoon. From their reader Jay_Jordan:
On a more serious note, I am thinking the intervening arrest of that Coast Guard white supremacist, with the written out list of Democratic targets and press, will not have helped Stone’s case much. Make an example of those who threaten judges and others.
It is not funny, and was never acceptable, and particularly not when Trump and Fox News and the rightwing are inciting ugliness with violent rhetoric.
Actions have consequences.
Yarrow
@StringOnAStick: You’re welcome. I’ll probably point it out again. I know we’ll see Fox News caught up in Mueller’s investigation. The Fox twitter accounts stopping tweeting has fascinated me, especially considering the timing of Murdoch’s visit to McConnell’s office. The fact they’ve stayed up indicates to me that there’s an order from a court for them to stop tweeting, stay untouched and all devices that accessed them are probably subpoenaed.
Jay
@Brachiator:
The linked article is talking about Trump/Russia and the use of unnamed sources, so, it’s not talking about the use of unnamed sources in Politics, it’s talking about the use of unnamed sources in Crime and Espionage.
In the AK non-story, there is no “reason” for the “Democrat operative” not to go “on record”. If they are who they claim they are, everybody in the Georgia Democratic Party who knows them, already know what their positions are. The only reason to claim anonamyity and for the “reporter” to provide it, is because they arn’t whom they claim to be and the “reporter” knows it.
The “reporter” is providing cover for someone to slide the knife in sideways and shit stirr amonst the Democratic Party base in Georgia and elsewhere.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: My in-laws from Buffalo definitely have that accent. Thanks to you, I can now put a label on it! Regarding accent mimics, I’ve often wondered whether GWB just naturally picked up a Texas drawl or cultivated it for effect. None of his siblings talk the same way.
MattF
@Elizabelle: No doubt that Judge Berman Jackson is proud of her Celtic heritage.
Immanentize
@Kay: In the way back, I took a linguistics class regarding regional dialects. The opinion* then was that picking up dialects and local intonations was more the product of the person being a “pleaser” who wanted to fit in than it was any specific listening aptitude. Some people are internally more motivated to sound like their friends and neighbors than others.
ETA *Experts in linguistics
Doug R
@Doug R:
…and the Canadian ambassador to Iran at great personal risk rescued Americans who would have otherwise been held hostage or even executed-during Carter’s time as president.
(sorry, editor got hung up when I tried to add)
West of the Rockies
@schrodingers_cat:
If you would vote for AK in the general, may I respectfully suggest you presently avoid derisive phrasing (Minnesota Mullet)?
ruemara
@kindness: A deadhead group has Trump supporters?
@Aleta: Not just conservatives. We need to acknowledge that part of it, because trust me, I’ve already had fights with people over the whole Kamala is a cop thing. It’s terrible misinfo, bumpersticker talk that’s rooted in personal biases and adoration of a certain person. I’m not looking forward to it. The prior cycle featured a lot of hurtful behavior and lies from people I genuinely cared about, who’ve never addressed the lying, condescending & bullying in their camp. It’s already hit the pitch it was at towards the middle of the campaign. No one has learned or adjusted a damned thing.
StringOnAStick
@Yarrow: Oh, another excellent point! Don’t touch those accounts FOXies, we’re watching and most of all, collecting.
I feel like I spent too much time reading this stuff when I should be doing so many other things, but it’s the car crash I can’t turn away from and after just over 2 years, it is also a habit now. It is such a large and multifaceted seething mass of corruption that I can’t keep the details straight anymore, there’s just too much. I realized I was too far “inside” when I was in Canada last month and the lodge owner asked me to explain what was going on and I had a hard time doing a summary from cruising altitude I kept wanting to wander off into the weeds and that wasn’t what she was asking me for. Once I figured out how much she knew we were able to converse easily about it, but I could also tell that she was falling for some internet misinformation campaigns too, understandable in some ways considering just how remote she and her husband are from any town of more than 200 people. Still, she made my morning when she told me Roger Stone had been indicted!
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
I had a group of juvenile delinquents make fun of an older lawyer because he was swearing at them. Like “look, you fucking losers, straighten up”. Okay I know him and he’s nice and he was trying to reach them, which they picked up, and had contempt for.
So mean, they are. He’s trying to talk in what he thinks is their language and they’re all jeering at him. That’s what he gets for caring, right? This mean-boy rejection which probably gave him horrible flashbacks to high school :)
tobie
@schrodingers_cat: It’s impossible on a blog to know what people’s triggers are but one thing we all share is the trauma of the last Presidential election. I’ve been trying to dial back my rhetoric regarding all Democratic aspirants for the Oval Office knowing that one of them will be the party nominee and will need all hands on deck to coast to victory.
Ruviana
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Sandinistas. The contras were our right-wing opposition.
Immanentize
Just for shits and grins, if you want to see what the right wing crazy looks like, Check out this picture of the weapons seized from the Coasty
Jeffro
@StringOnAStick: re Fox: they just stoke it and stoke it, all day long. And they drop enough shit in there from enough angles that almost no matter who you are, sooner or later you’ll hear/see something on Fox that really irks you – we’re all human, after all – and then you’re hooked.
It really is sick.
StringOnAStick
@Immanentize: Picking up accents is something some people do better than others, or don’t do at all. Like the girl with the heavy New York accent in my junior high class in white bread western Colorado; that exotic Bronx accent was gone in 2 weeks after it brought her so much more attention that she was comfortable with. I know a couple who moved to Australia; he had the accent in a matter of months and she thought he was being patronizing.
I used to be a hydrogeologist so I worked often with drillers and roughnecks. I come from a blue collar town and can turn that accent off and on as needed but when I first realized I was doing it subconsciously was working with guys like drillers who already aren’t that thrilled with having a “white hat” (supervisor) around and especially not a female one. I always got along really well with these guys and one went to bat for me against the stupid redneck son of the company president, but that was pre-tRumpian nightmare so who knows if that would happen now. I feel like the walls between the various groups have been significantly reinforced. I’m also not willing to pretend I’m a Mango Moron fan in order to get along anymore, and I find that it’s his fans that flat out shove it in your face and make you do a thumbs up or down as the price of entry into their group.
Immanentize
@schrodingers_cat: @tobie:
Like Tobie said, it’s hard to know what anyone’s triggers are. I really don’t think he was aiming at you, so much as not liking nick names (I don’t either, but I tend to just ignore them. My least favorite here is “totus something or other” for Trump that I just don’t get).
So here is my story — I was over at the GOS in the olden days and I said that a front pager’s twisting of information to support his (lefty) point was “Rovian.” The guy actually wrote an email to my private addy to rant that I was the worst human ever and I should be punished, if not jailed for such a suggestion, etc. Wow. That guy still front pages over there and still is a loose cannon. But definitely NOT Rovian!
Kay
Guffaw. This is a person who will do anything, literally anything, for power :)
I cannot believe he threw his son under the bus, especially because the son seems to be the best person in that family.
chopper
so klobuchar eats shit over not meeting abrams in GA, when abrams is instead somewhere else anyways?
god, i hate primary season.
Gravenstone
@glory b: Which then allowed the Michelle Malkins of the (under)world shift it to the even more pejorative Demon-RAT. Such fine, fine minds they tend to offer us.
noncarborundum
@oatler. @glory b: : It goes way back before that. I remember seeing it in RNC publications during the 1972 election.
The Midnight Lurker
1. Whoever wrote this trash is not a ‘democratic operative’. They’re a right wing asshole. And the only ‘Jolt’ I ever get from reading the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s ‘political blog’, is when I spit up in my coffee mug reading their stupid shit.
2. Practically all of our mainstream media is owned and operated by rich people who are terrified of ‘Green New Deals’, ‘Taxing the Rich’, Warren, AOC, Girl Scout cookie sales, etc. So you can expect an avalanche of ‘Democrats in Disarray’, ‘Not black enough’, ‘Had coffee with Saul Alinsky’,’They want to take away your car/cow’,’Too ghetto’, ‘Killed a man in Reno just to watch him die’, and other lovely ‘mean girl’ stories. Anything to keep their qualifications and policy ideas out of the papers. Meanwhile, Howard Shultz will only get glowing reviews, no matter what ignorant shit he spouts on every prime time slot they can offer up.
3. Quit beating up on ‘democratic operatives’. What did you heroes do? Put up a yard sign?
Jeffro
Intriguing that there’s all this coverage of Jussie Mollett (black actor who faked being attacked by #MAGA whites) and hardly any of Christopher Hasson (white guy who was planning to kill dozens of progressive politicians and anti-trumpov media figures)
Hmm, what are we to make of that ‘math’, America? Especially if you parse it down to some of the headlines – “white nationalist planning attack on everyone” “target list included media figures” Um, NO. It wasn’t “everyone” and it wasn’t “media figures” in general.
MattF
@Kay: One gets a taste of how that particular family drama goes. Not pretty.
Major Major Major Major
Huh, missed this. I’d forgotten that the exact order in which you meet with people is a CRITICAL FACT about which we MUST BE OUTRAGED CONSTANTLY. And for fuck’s sake, the idea that talking with wealthy donors is wrong is so, so stupid. (To be clear, I say that within the context of our current electoral system.)
Fair Economist
@Jeffro: Selective reporting of irrelevant facts.
Just based on statistics there were probably several genuine white on black racially motivated attacks the same week as the Smollett business, but somehow they don’t get reported on.
Gravenstone
@A Ghost To Most: As I said last night when the news first broke here about the son explicitly warning his crooked father – future holiday gatherings are likely to become rather tense. Looks like dad’s ego and hubris will prevent him from taking any responsibility at all for his proactive decisions to employ a known fraudster.
Uncle Cosmo
@tobie:
Um – “not so fast, Schwartz!” This isn’t necessarily Trumpist or Russian or even garden-variety Thuglican ratfuckery. Likely there’s a list long as your arm of peeps who’d love to derail the AK campaign train for reasons having squat to to with Polly Ticks.
If I were looking to track down the source of the rodentfornication, I’d start with a list of former Klobuchar staffers; I would narrow the list to everyone who might have left Amy’s employ for a desirable new position only to have the offer withdrawn after the Senator’s intervention (=> motive); and of the remaining I would identify those who are (1) no longer working in Democratic Party politics (=> immunity from retribution) and/or (2) have friends or other contacts in the political media (=> means, opportunity). I would go back at least through Klobuchar’s 2+ Senate terms. And I would look back on her 8 years as Hennepin County Attorney as well for those with axes to grind. Revenge, as they say, is a dish best served cold…
WhatsMyNym
This is an example of the fine political reporting we can expect even from the WaPo, a current headline listed in the Politics section –
Kamala Harris’s Jamaican father wasn’t amused by her joke about marijuana use
I’m not even going to link to it.
schrodingers_cat
@Immanentize: I too have no idea what totus is supposed to mean.
VeniceRiley
@ruemara:
Just this morning I reported a bot created just this month saying that. The bot was set up as a fake Budiegeg supporter. They’re getting more sophisticated. But yeah, I lost a LOT of FB friends in 2016 for their blind fannish Wilmerizing and Russian meme sharing slandering HRC.
rikyrah
I will apologize about the Abrams thing…Klobuchar is still only on Strike One…for her ‘ All lives Matters’ answers at the Town Hall, and her still refusal to bring up Black folks and the justice system, even though she had Philando Castile in her backyard.
Still waiting for proof that she went after employees with their new employers…as I’ve said before, if true, she’s cancelled.
Kathleen
@Kay: Hillary had very pronounced accent. “Chicahhgoh”.
Roger Moore
@Kay:
Being in sympathy with the people you interact with is an important part of being a good retail politician.
schrodingers_cat
@rikyrah: Be sure to refer to her as the gentlewoman from Minnesota, henceforth.
The Midnight Lurker
@WhatsMyNym:
She wasn’t born in this country! She’s illegitimate!!! BIRTHERISM ARISE!!!!
In other news… Noelle Bush’s Caucasian father wasn’t amused by her joke about crack cocaine.
FlyingToaster (Tablet)
@schrodingers_cat: T for toddler.
Barbara
@rikyrah: I don’t think Klobuchar brings anything special to the table.
ruemara
@WhatsMyNym: You missed an ABC reporter on the twitters deriding Harris for eating chicken & waffles during her breakfast with Al Sharpton. I hate these people so much now.
@VeniceRiley: Interesting. I’ll be watching to see who they pick as the additional ratfucking shield, but my money is on Sanctus Vermontus.
Uncle Cosmo
@JoeyJoeJoe: Believe it goes back to Robert Taft & his followers in the late 1940s – early 1950s. Could be even earlier.
debit
@rikyrah: I’m just waiting for someone to call me out as a ratfucker. I’m only her constituent, it’s not like I’m allowed an opinion or anything.
JPL
@schrodingers_cat: Your comment seemed a little harsh to tobie. My opinion only an I for one know you’re better than that.
tobie
@Uncle Cosmo: Thanks for that link. It’s so interesting to read a 2010 take on politics now. Funny, too, that the author was convinced that there was no way we could get 60 Senators to vote for the ACA. As for people with knives out–yeah, politics ain’t bean bag, which is probably why none of us has jumped into the ring–with the exception of Baud and Baud is universally loved as a candidate on this blog.
trollhattan
@Elizabelle:
Have yet to hear reporting on the Coast Guard proto-assassin make a comparison to last year’s failed MAGA pipebomber, who literally had a hit list pasted on his van.
When is one of these guys going to pull a Stephen Paddock and what are we willing to do to stop it?
schrodingers_cat
@debit: Nope no opinions allowed about the non binder throwing Gentle lady from Minnesota, with great hair.
JPL
@Elizabelle: So far it appears that the president is ignoring that arrest. It appears that it doesn’t fit his scenario about the dangers of immigration.
Kay
@Roger Moore:
Remember the ACTUAL Joe the Plumber incident? What really happened? Obama engaged that person. He sought a dialogue with him, although Obama’s smart and he knew “Joe” was essentially posing a boring, extended hypothetical to make a boilerplate Right wing point. Not a question at all. A fake question. But, good faith, right? “Sure. I’ll go back and forth with you for a while”
You can’t imagine Trump doing it. He doesn’t speak to the underlings at all.
Roger Moore
@Kay:
I can totally understand him throwing his son under the bus. As far as he’s concerned, it was his son who threw him under the bus by testifying against him. That’s how people like him justify their awfulness.
Elizabelle
@trollhattan:
@JPL:
Imagine that. It’s almost like our finest media has blinders on, or something.
Ah well. We are not the only people who have noticed that little detail.
Kent
@ruemara:
Honestly, this is what the general election is going to be like 24/7. If AK can’t take charge of her own media narrative when frankly hardly anyone is listening then she doesn’t have the chops for a 24/7 national campaign in today’s media environment. I despise this sort of trivial media meme bullshit as much as the next person. And I’d like to see an actual campaign on the issues. But that isn’t the world we live in. So I’ll be watching how the candidates master this sort of thing in the training ground that is the primary and pre-primary season.
If AK is going to twist in the wind at the mercy of twitter-trolls then that is a good thing to know now.
Elizabelle
@Roger Moore:
The Lord told him to.
Son was not “honoring his father and mother.” Or something. I would like to see Reverend shyster end up with jail time and a felony record too. Good for the soul.
Gravenstone
@WhatsMyNym: That’s tame compared to the Yahoo News hed I saw about his reaction the other day. Something a “stain” on the family name. Yeah, because your adult daughter has admitted to indulging in a substance that isn’t exactly uncommon in Caribbean climes, let alone in general.
schrodingers_cat
@JPL: It was harsh but so was being called Trumpian, for language much milder than many jackals including FPers use, routinely.
rikyrah
Money Trumps Misogyny: Media Coverage of Bernie’s Rollout Exposes Privilege and Complicity
Jay
@rikyrah:
“Still waiting for proof that she went after employees with their new employers…as I’ve said before, if true, she’s cancelled.”
Until somebody comes forward and puts their name to it, it’s just stereotypical gossip about female “bosses” designed to feed a meme, not reality.
Ignore it and don’t bother repeating it, even as a possible disqualifier, until it moves from gossip to claim.
Kent
@Roger Moore:
I sort of come from that world. My Dad was a minister and I have an uncle and cousin who were ministers. Not Baptist but close enough. So I know what it’s like to grow up in a family where not only does “father know best” but “God told him that father knows best.” Does’t surprise me in the slightest that the adult son is sick of his dad’s sanctimonious authoritarian bullshit.
rikyrah
Shocking moment socialite ex-wife of the Houston Astros owner twice lashes out at a couple taking photos for their baby’s first birthday because they were ‘blocking the sidewalk’
Franci Neely hits out at their phone and balloons in the footage from Saturday
Clips shows a barefoot Neely confronting the family as their baby cries out
She is filmed twice lashing out during the argument in Houston, Texas
Isaiah Allen and his wife Kelyn say they have now filed a police report
Neely has apologized but says the ‘high volume of commercial photography damages the property’ in the area and photographers have been asked to stop
But it appears it is not the first time Neely has been involved in such an incident
The city of Houston said the land in question is in the public right-of-way
By LAUREN FRUEN FOR DAILYMAIL.COM
PUBLISHED: 12:24 EST, 20 February 2019 | UPDATED: 17:39 EST, 20 February 2019
Dorothy A. Winsor
The Stone hearing has started. Here’s a twitter thread that’s live posting.
Stone’s attorney says they don’t want to change the gag order but wants Stone of the stand to explain himself.
schrodingers_cat
@FlyingToaster (Tablet): Thanks!
Aleta
@ruemara: yeah I definitely agree. I recently saw some of that ‘sexual politics just ain’t what it used to be, b/c certain women are to blame’ from someone on the outer left, even though to me it was irrelevant and a diversion.
rikyrah
@Jay:
I disagree.
The stuff about her being a ‘tough boss’, I dismissed.
The story about contacting the employers puts it in another category.
WhatsMyNym
@Gravenstone:
And it’s legal on the west coast.
debit
@schrodingers_cat: Meh. OTOH I understand pushing back against a (potentially) false narrative, but on the other this is when any disqualifying stuff should come out. If she can’t push back on this then she’s going to collapse under heavier fire. I have my own reasons for not being enthusiastic about AK but @rikyrah: makes a good point about not recognizing Philando Castile and the “all lives matter” bullshit. These are stupid missteps at best, callous and uncaring at worst.
schrodingers_cat
@ruemara: You wanna bet that they would have gone after her, even if KH was a vegetarian like many Tamil people are.
rikyrah
@Kay:
And, he’s a REVEREND, Kay. A REVEREND.
Brachiator
@Immanentize:
It’s one thing to pick up an accent. It’s something different to decide to adopt an accent.
I can do an East Texas accent, a Georgia accent, and an Oklahoma accent fairly easily. But none of this reflects my “natural” accent, which is fairly neutral. When I went to college back East, I could mimic some New York and Connecticut accents, listening to friends and classmates.
British-Danish comedian Sandi Toksvig grew up in New York City and had a heavy accent. Her parents sent her to school in England and early on none of the other girls would even speak to her. Toksvig deliberately adopted a British accent based on the 1950s movies she watched. Some people who don’t know her assume that she is British and posh.
ruemara
@Gravenstone: Let me help you as a resident Jamaican. Churchifiedness is more Jamaican than weed.
@schrodingers_cat: They went after her for putting hot sauce on her greens last week.
Lapassionara
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Thanks!
Fleeting Expletive
@schrodingers_cat: About Amy K’s haircut: I saw a cute reference to her style as “middle-class midwestern white lady haircut…could be 2 inches shorter or 2 inches longer but it’s standard.” I think I agree.
schrodingers_cat
@ruemara: I saw that. Sanskari Jaimcan! that makes laugh. If there was a gold medal for hypocrisy I think India would be the perennial champ. I didn’t know that Jamaica was a contender too.
JPL
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Stone: “I recognize that I let the court down. I let you down. I let myself down. I let my family down. I let my attorneys down. I can only say I’m sorry. it was a momentary lapse in judgement. Perhaps I talk too much.”
ruemara
@schrodingers_cat: It’s bizarre. I made a fucking frosting with sriracha for pete’s sake. Who wouldn’t like hot sauce for their greens & what unseasoned hell do they come from?
Dorothy A. Winsor
@JPL:
LOLOL
Barbara
@rikyrah: I have to say that I find that site to be a bit over the top in that it infers rather sweeping conclusions from small numbers of examples of things. This is definitely one reason I regret the presidential election cycle has become so long.
Fair Economist
@Kent:
This standard is the problem. *No* Democratic politician can take charge of their own media narrative, because the media is mostly run by people who are hostile to them and don’t take orders from them. No Democrat can make the republican operative with no journalism experience who is now the CNN news editor treat them fairly, and it’s not fair to expect them to.
Martin
@WhatsMyNym: Well, to the WaPos credit, it was Kamala who brought up the whole ‘my dad is Jamaican, of course I smoked pot’. Dad seems like a bit of a dick, though. I’m happy to throw my Irish family tree up as an excuse to drink and other things, even though there’s no part of my actual family upbringing that reinforced that. It’s just a lighthearted excuse. Everyone does it in one form or another. If my dad protested that, I’d totally be ‘lighten up, francis, it wasn’t about you’
I just see it as Kamala trying to walk a fairly precarious line between the need to prove her blackness to some, and not use it as an excuse to others. As with Klobouchars thing in Georgia, it’s a pretty trivial foul.
rikyrah
@Kent:
They were at Sylvia’s, if I read correctly, and that’s a signature dish of theirs.
Jay
@rikyrah:
Nobody stuck their name on it, until somebody does, it’s gossip.
Funny thing is, my Fortune 100 former employer has a policy of not giving references, just confirming employment and positions. Something about lawsuits.
You would think a Lawyer would know stuff about it.
There’s going to be shitloads of “unnamed sources” unconfirmed claims about every Democratic Party cantidate until the General.
Until somebody sticks their name to a claim and a second named party confirms it, treat it all as bullshit and ratfucking and don’t repeat it.
There’s lots of actual, confirmed reasons to argue that AK isn’t your Primary choice.
sukabi
@JPL: Harris in NC just used “I had a couple of strokes, I may not have used good judgement.” as an excuse for disregarding his son’s advice on committing election fraud.?
Barbara
@A Ghost To Most: I am guessing that he never even dreamed that someone would call his son to testify, and assumed the warnings he received would never be exposed. In his world, “arrogant” applies to any difference of opinion with dear old dad.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@sukabi: Jesus. For a minute,I thought you were talking about Kamala. I was horrified to hear she’d had “a couple of strokes.”
Barbara
@Jay: Seriously, you just don’t know the context for these kinds of allegations.
TomatoQueen
@Kathleen: In my experience of living and working and attending school in lots of widely separated places over a long time, I note: the native always seems to bear the accent longer and more thoroughly than the transplant, so that Hillary and Michelle as Illinois natives have done and will always sound that way, whereas Barack adapted and Bill just kept going (Hillary could do a nice Arkansas twang when she had to). My parents, native Angelenos (unto the 5th generation), lived in Connecticut for 50 years and never picked up the accent thank ye gods, while I could pronounce my consonants but had to fight to get the stray long ‘e’ away from every other vowel. And having lived off and on in the South for over 20 years, I sprinkle y’all judiciously as needed, but still sound like I’m reading the evening news from somewhere just outside London.
Barbara
@sukabi: I had a couple of strokes, my judgment is shot and why would anybody vote for me anyway? Well, if I had to choose between being seated in Congress and staying out of jail, I would definitely go with the no jail option.
dww44
FWIW, this whole tempest in a teapot came up last evening on Adam’s post. As a lifelong Georgian. I weighed in in defense of both our Stacey’s and advised all that it was early days to be trying to divide us since the GOP still has a firm and virtually impervious hold on the reins of power in this state.. Eye on the prize, as they say. Also, fwiw, I am now way more aware and on the lookout for trolls, be they foreign or domestic. I saw my first of the election season in that very same thread.
Betty Cracker
@rikyrah: Didn’t mean to call you out specifically — I jump to conclusions all the time, especially when it seems to come from a semi-credible source and reinforces something I already believe. I’m not a Klobuchar groupie, but I did watch the CNN town hall. What was it about her answers that seemed “all lives matter”-ish to you? I didn’t pick up on that, but I can be clueless.
Jay
@Fair Economist:
Double yup, ?????
germy
Judge Jackson just read from Roger Stone’s financial filings: he makes $47,000 a month as a consultant.
Nice work if you can get it.
sukabi
@Dorothy A. Winsor: sorry, should have been more specific.?
WhatsMyNym
@Martin:
It was gossipy trash from the WaPo and they had the guts to list it under Politics.
Gravenstone
@rikyrah: The same Sylvia’s that infamously gave us Bill(do) O’Reilly being shocked that the Black patrons weren’t screaming “MF-er, I want more iced tea?”
Dorothy A. Winsor
“Now we’re discussing how Stone found the image, among two or three of Berman Jackson. Stone said he chose it “just randomly.”
Berman Jackson: “You closed your eyes and picked?”
Via Tierney Sneed.
There’s not a lot going on on that thread, sadly.
rikyrah
@germy:
47k a month?!?!?!?
germy
@rikyrah: These people aren’t like you and me.
Gin & Tonic
@germy: My son will need a job in May, I’ll tell him to become an asshole. It seems to pay quite well.
rikyrah
@Gravenstone:
the same Sylvia’s
schrodingers_cat
We need a new thread.
trollhattan
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Hey, “a couple” isn’t that many strokes.
I need a scorecard with this already massive field. “AK” to me reads like Alaska is running for the Dem nomination. Huskies rool!
StringOnAStick
@Barbara: “Arrogant” is also fundy code-speak for not Godly, as in the commandment to honor your parents, especially the one with the superior pen!s. Plus arrogant means did not do exactly as the father said to do, so that’s a big no-no in fundy land. The dad is trying to shore up his fundiness as his Get Out of Jail Free card.
piratedan
OK Chicago peeps, I just got a job offer today from a Chicago Medical facility and what can you tell me about the city? I am pretty much clueless about what Chi-Town has to offer, so I’m looking for anything and everything anyone feels compelled to share. If I take the position, eventually I have to relocate three canines and 5 felines, so I would be looking at a place that would give the dogs some romp room.
other offers may be pending from Atlanta, Harrisburg and Tacoma… so I’m trying to arm myself with as much real life anecdotia as possible… tyvm.
Gravenstone
@germy: Oh please do go into greater detail, Your Honor. Who are the clients that would offer such a low life $47k/month for his in depth knowledge of rat fuckery and dirty tricks?
Martin
I just wanted to bring up the Jussie Smollett thing.
When the news first came out, I expressed some skepticism. The reporting by whatever outlet broke that news sounded fishy. I was willing to attribute that to the outlet getting the information wrong, and not to Smollett himself, but it turns out my skepticism was warranted.
I wasn’t doubting that there are racists and homophobes out there, and was still taking Smollett at his word, but the aspect of the reporting that sounded fishy was that it was described as something of a chance encounter and also as a premeditated act, and I couldn’t square those things. You had two people walking around the city in the middle of the night, spotting someone that they seemed to recognize and shouting racial and homophobic slurs, who just happened to have rope and bleach on them? Or you had two people looking to attack Smollett which is why they had the rope and bleach but rather than find him somewhere predictable (his house, near his work, etc) they bump into him in the middle of the city? Those two things didn’t line up for me. Had they broken into his house, okay, that makes sense. Had they run into him by chance and assaulted him with things found on the street, that also makes sense. But the two together didn’t sound right.
Being a skeptic doesn’t require being biased against the person based on who they are or being skeptical that hate crimes happen entirely too often. The incident as described simply struck me as a scene in a movie that Jenny Nicholson would proceed to pick apart as being poorly written and difficult to believe. Not only is it an unfortunate incident, but it’s also unfortunate that Jussie felt (probably correctly) that such an incident might help his career. That’s less an indictment of where our culture is on race and more on how arbitrary and capricious celebrity careers are (see Harvey Weinstein).
Gin & Tonic
@piratedan: It’s flat and cold and windy.
Jay
@Barbara:
They are allegations. Nobody stuck their name to it, nobody confirmed it.
It’s gossip that I have heard about every female VP, Manager and Supervisor I ever worked with an was only “true” once,
and in that case, I called her on it, ( unprofessional) and we worked things out with the help of HR.
Were the gossip true, then it’s a completely disqualifying temperment for a US President with nuclear access. So, if the gossip is true, then all of AK’s former and current employees are completely gutless and have no concepts of responsibility and patriotism.
StringOnAStick
@piratedan: Relocate from where? That’s a bit of a herd to have to move long distance (pet downers sound like a good idea). I shouldn’t even post, I have no idea on any of those locations.
debit
@Gin & Tonic: But so much good food! And theaters! And booze in the grocery stores!
raven
@piratedan: Moving to Chicago with a Dog: What You Need to Know
The Moar You Know
@Gravenstone: In every one of those “Carribean climes” possession thereof is a felony, most of which include mandatory prison time. FYI.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@StringOnAStick: I’ve lived in a NW Chicago suburb for about 6 months, but you need someone far more city savvy than I am.
Roger Stone: Stone struggling to name volunteers who help with his social media posting and who may have been involved in this instagram post: “I don’t recall the other. Its a revolving situation.”
Kay
Literally thousands of criminals are saying this in city and county courtrooms all over the United States today.
What’s funny about the rich and powerful crooks is how they are exactly like all other crooks. All those media people who marvel at Trump’s gangster language? That’s the language they speak! Same one!
We should treat them all the same. That’s what I’m saying.
raven
@piratedan: Are you young? All the young people I know who live in the city love it. Anywhere decent is going to be expensive but that would be the case in the ATL as well.
piratedan
@Gin & Tonic: @StringOnAStick: I have heard that G&T tyvm…. will try not to get into a cardboard box on the lake :-)
I would be relocating from Tucson, AZ, so the climate change is a thing (most def) but I guess I’m just trying to get a handle on neighborhoods to seek out (or avoid), we’re def. middle class but now empty nesters, so I want room for the dogs to be able to chase, romp and bark.
Plato
Now to the real shitstorm.
Didn’t the totus thug have a ‘yuuuge rally’ there just last week?
Kent
@Fair Economist:
It’s not fair but it is the world we live in. Bill Clinton and Obama were masters at commanding the media narrative when the horseshit was being flung at them by the tanker truck load. Al Gore, John Kerry, and Hillary Clinton, not so much. It is an intangible blend of political skill, instincts, and charisma. I don’t think you can define it or copy it. As the 2020 campaign sorts itself out I’m sure we will soon figure out who has it and who doesn’t. At this point I frankly have no idea who among the candidates is the most natural and talented politician. I’m kind of thinging Warren and Harris but it is way too early to tell.
Steve in the ATL
@piratedan: Cubs are awesome, White Sox suck.
/north side native
Steve in the ATL
@raven: did you get my email yesterday?
piratedan
@raven: ty for the link, we have a lab mix, an eskinu and an older corgi, so finding a place with a yard is likely a must for us…..chances are I will have to do the apartment thing for a while and relocate Momma and the brood a bit later….
raven
@piratedan: My buddy moved from Tucson to Ft Meyers two years ago. We used to fish on the Sea of Cortez but it got to be not that great of an idea to fool around down in Sonora. He had lived in AZ for 40 years and I was really surprised how much he likes it down there. This has nothing to do with Chicago but what the hell!
Dan B
@Kent: I agree that the response should be to respond. Right now the smears only gain traction if the response is defensive: I didn’t mean to ignore Stacey! You’ve got it all wrong! This comes across as defensive and sounds like you’re trying to hide something.
Every time there us a media storm there is an opportunity to jump in and respond in a simple way, outline your next steps (working with Stacey Abrams when she is available) and define your goals and principles. (Fair and transparent elections, right for everyone to vote and prosecution of those who want to make voting difficult. These are dear to us and to Stacey Abrams.)
I could go on but Klobuchar needs rapid response.
Gravenstone
@Dorothy A. Winsor: If he had multiples to choose from, then why didn’t he just substitute in a different one when the furor over the crosshairs first arose. Instead he simply edited it to exclude the crosshairs from the image then re-posted. Lying prick…
raven
@Steve in the ATL: No, gmail?
rikyrah
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
But, he’d turn his phone over to someone whose name he can’t remember….
sure…
Lips pursed.
Steve in the ATL
@piratedan: Atlanta and Chicago are more expensive than Tucson, and Chicago more so than Atlanta. Atlanta is also known for having high quality blog posters.
Harrisburg, PA? It’s a dump.
Limited knowledge of Tacoma but in my experience lots of people drive right at or slightly below the speed limit in the left lane, so I could never live there.
piratedan
@raven: tbh, I love it here in the Old Pueblo, but job circumstances may dictate a move… Chicago is the first one to actually put a non-insulting offer on the table, other contenders that I am waiting on are Tacoma, Atlanta and Harrisburg PA. So I’m trying my best to get a feel from people that I trust(?!?) to get as much input as possible to help with the decision making process….
Steve in the ATL
@raven: yes. Bumped into a couple of your neighbors at ATL yesterday.
Steve in the ATL
@piratedan: your imaginary internet friends are here to help!
Brachiator
@Martin:
This makes no sense. Notoriety off stage or off screen doesn’t do much for an actor. “Get me that kid that had bleach thrown on him. I will make him a STAR!!” Nope.
What?
I didn’t pay much attention to the story. But breaking or fast moving stories in which a suspect is not seen by anyone else or not quickly arrested, I pay even less attention.
The sad thing is that all the morons eager to deny the existence of racism in America are chomping down on this story harder than a hungry pit pull with a favorite chew toy.
piratedan
@Steve in the ATL: that is my understanding as well Steve, Atlanta is running up against the fact that I essentially grew up in the South (Va and NC) and have some reservations on returning, especially so in the social/political climate that we now live in. While Harrisburg may be a dump, by COL contrast its certainly cheaper.
Martin
@Steve in the ATL: Harrisburg is a dump. I lived near there for a while back in the hey man, nice shot days. But, I suspect it’s a bit on the upswing like a lot of similar cities, and if you had 8 pets and wanted space for them, Harrisburg is a city where you can afford to buy a house with a decent yard on a reasonable income. It’s a place where if you have a good job you can save money, build equity and aim for something bigger later on. If you’ve already done that part, yeah, I’d aim for someplace bigger or smaller, depending on your goals in life.
trollhattan
@piratedan:
Congratulations on having lots of options!
As a Seattleite in my yoot we would laugh and laugh and laugh at Tacoma but today, Tacoma is a better than average city in one of the country’s most beautiful regions, presuming mountains, rivers, forests and the Pacific are your thing. And pets would be no issue.
You will also never need to dress like an Eskimo, nor a Bedouin, if that matters. Chicago weather ain’t for sissies.
mad citizen
@Martin: My wife and I were also skeptical from the start. The going to Subway at 1 or 2 a.m. after flying in from L.A. didn’t add up for me. If you’re that hungry you would have got food in LAX, taken something into the plane, or bought something upon landing and have it in your apartment.
Bill Arnold
@Aleta:
Yes! Along these lines (this is something Adam could give us a massive info dump/tutorial on), several areas that deal with active adversaries, starting with the military, use a role-playing adversary or adversarial team:
5 Irrational Reasons Military Leaders Hate Red Teaming
Read Team (wikipedia)
Definition of red team (Financial Times lexicon)
Cybersecurity Red Team Versus Blue Team — Main Differences Explained
Gin & Tonic
@piratedan: Well, Harrisburg is a dump. Of your other options I’d actually prefer Tucson, so I’m not much help if you really have to leave. I actually have friends and family in Chicago, and I’d have to get one hell of an offer to consider moving there.
Steve in the ATL
@trollhattan: still a big meth scene in Tacoma? Not sure how piratedan likes to party, but it’s good to have all the info!
piratedan
@trollhattan: I hear ya Troll, I’m not as young as I used to be so that’s most definitely a factor in the decision. The spouse and I discussed our initial impressions of the possibilities last night to try and get a feel on ranking the possibilities… I’m just trying my best to get as much information to make an “informed” decision as possible.
mad citizen
Chicago is my favorite big city, but I’m from Indiana. With that many dogs you might have to be in the suburbs, and commuting might not be fun if you’re at the usual times. But there are thousands of city houses with yards so what do I know?
Barbara
@piratedan: Chicago is expensive, like most major cities, and might feel a little low on green space (or at least it did to me). I would find it difficult to live in Atlanta, but I am sure with a big budget and a lot of advice on finding a strategic location for work and home, it would be okay. I know nothing about Tacoma. My nephew lives outside of Harrisburg and my cousin has lived there for 20 years. It has rust belt survivor syndrome and yet you don’t have to travel far to be in rural farmland. It’s had a lot of growth over the last few years and I am sure the cost of living puts it well beneath your other options.
Jay
@Kent:
The Media environment is much worse and moves much faster now, than during Clinton’s time and even Obama’s time.
While AOC is a “media master” in some regards, don’t read the comments on her twitter, or in the RWNJ media. You will find a complete absence of fact and reality.
While every Cantidate should have an intersexional War Room to try to define the narrative and push back hard on fake media,
Even if it’s crowd sourced, it’s still a few dozen people vs. Bot armies, 10’s of thousands of trolls and a chattering class that buys ink by the tanker load and hours of airtime.
trollhattan
@piratedan:
Time well spent–it’s a huge, life-altering choice.
mad citizen
@Bill Arnold: why not just have the Dem candidates agree to use the Reagan Rule and not say bad crap about each other? And take it further and call it out constantly, whether it’s happening to themselves or a competitor.
Steve in the ATL
@piratedan: Atlanta is fine politically. The rural areas of the state are godawful. This seems to be true of most states.
Atlanta and Chicago are big, Chicago more so than Atlanta, so you may be looking at a long commute, which you aren’t used to in Tucson.
Martin and you make a good point about COL and needing space for pets. Harrisburg is a good choice for that reason, though when I woke up Tuesday morning not far for there it was 15 degrees with winter weather in the way.
mad citizen
@Barbara: I get the Crains business news emails. Chicago is developing a green space/linear park along one of the river branches. Looks like a High Line deal. Today it was a proposal to build a new neighborhood over the Metra train tracks across from Soldier Field. If you are downtown the trail along the lake goes 40 miles from Wisconsin to Indiana.
piratedan
@Steve in the ATL: yeah, when I was ranking climate I had Tacoma, Atlanta, Harrisburg, Chicago, when I looked at the cultural thing, it came up Chicago, Atlanta, Tacoma, Harrisburg, but COL it came up Harrisburg, Atlanta, Tacoma, Chicago… so while I could make an argument for any of them, it’s still not an easy thing to sift through what’s REALLY important. Currently I work from home, so getting back into the commuting gig is going to take some time, but depending upon the radio station choices and if I keep my XM subscription will help that to a degree.
raven
@Steve in the ATL: My wife was there!
Gin & Tonic
@piratedan: Chicago does have decent mass transit options, so depending on where work and home are situated, you may not need to drive. I’d rather gouge my eyes out than drive in Chicago.
raven
@Steve in the ATL: @Steve in the ATL: I got it now! My wife was at the Moms Demand Action gig at the Golden Dome and that’s what I thought you meant.
Steve in the ATL
@piratedan: if you get serious about Atlanta, Adam can connect us offline. I’ll give the locals only dish, like where Subaru Diane hangs out…
piratedan
@Steve in the ATL: Will do Steve, all of the possibilities are in various stages of development, Chicago was the first to have the penny drop and someone send an offer to me electronically. Have to see if any of the others also come into play, although based on conversations I’ve apparently cleared the HR vetting hurdle in each case.
Fair Economist
@piratedan: Chicago is a great city. Lots to do, decent job market, and excellent public transportation. Much of the Northside is pretty expensive and much of the West and South Sides are dangerous but Chicago still has lots of walkable, affordable neighborhoods all over the city.
piratedan
@Fair Economist: FE, well I guess what I would like to know is what suburb is doable with multiple pets and is there mass transit from the burbs to downtown and if so, what are the general costs like in money and time…
Dan B
@Kent: My questions are: Did Klobuchar respond to the media tempest about Abrams? If so did it get ignored by the media, MSM etc? Does she have dedicated staff to handle media responses? If so is there staff to respond to local media and tap local comm’s experts as well as national?
And: Where is the DNC? Are they hammering the Russian Bot story or the Democratic candidates believe XYZ storyline?
GOTV is essential as are events but there must be a meaningful staff capacity to seize the media crises and turn them into free media moments.
Kathleen
@TomatoQueen: We moved a lot when I was a kid because my dad was in radio. He always teased my mom and me for picking up local accents. He never had any accent (born in Wyoming and raised in Nebraska). I had never noticed Hillary’s accent before and got the sense she might have been a little tired when it sounded more pronounced. I don’t think I have an accent anymore.
PST
@schrodingers_cat:
I propose calling it the 4M — middle-aged midwestern mom mop. I should add that I like it just fine.
Dan B
@Kent: It feels like the atitude of many progressives is “We are victims of right wing / corporate media.” Both descriptions are correct but if that were the only thing that mattered we would not have gay marriage. Us LGBTQ activists went up against a society that was convinced we were disgusting diseased perverts and made headway.
The media can be used but you have to respond everytime or you get defined by a media that is ignorant and often stupid. The media is full of people and they are not controlled at every moment by their overlords. Not even FUUUUX NNNNEWS.
Dan B
@piratedan: I can’t speak for your other cities but Tacoma is (finally) coming into its own. There’s spillover from Seattle’s crazy growth that seems to be folks fleeing high COL but also people fleeing the tech bros who want to live somewhere cool but could give a damn about contributing to the culture. As a result a lot of artists and other creative types are finding space to thrive and break new ground in Tacoma.
Bill Arnold
@Dan B:
This. Many, perhaps most journalists hunger for praise and validation and non-flaming comments from their peers and readers, not just a paycheck. (But be honest about praise, always, no exceptions.)
Brickley Paiste
How would one distinguish between Russian post attempting to influence the election by sowing division and rancor and posts and comments here that repeatedly attack Bernie Sanders, his former and current supporters, generic “white people”, etc?
Asking for a comrade …
J R in WV
@Yarrow:
Daniel Strauss started as a reporter for The Hill, which I once thought was an actual journalism institution, but which I have since come to realize is a right wing nut job publication trying to disguise itself as an actual journalism publication.
So his very first job was as a RWNJ writer, and he is still one of those. Fuck him, the horse he rode in on, and everyone he is associated with professionally or personally.
J R in WV
@Belafon:
Yes, it does. But it is how a non-Democrat would talk about a Democratic employee, isn’t it?
I hate that construction, it isn’t how Democrats refer to themselves, it’s how enemies of the Democratic party refer to Democrats. Fuck those bastards!!
Jay
@Dan B:
Stacy’s Manager pushed back against the BS fake news pointing out that she wasn’t in State at the time and that AK and her Campaign were working on setting up a meet and greet.*
The BS fake news hatchet job is still up.
* this is the person to do the debunking because of not just their position, but because of the shit stirring of the fake news.
BTdubs:
“Democratic voters will not be able to avoid being subjected to these kinds of aggressive influence operations. Many will willingly participate in them when they see it as advantageous to their preferred candidate. They’ll share disinformation because it confirms what they want to believe or because they cynically think it will serve their cause. Whether wittingly or unwittingly, people will do the work of the social media trolls for them.
If you want to be a responsible citizen, you should resist this whole process. Sharing posts that are disparaging of other candidates should be done very selectively, and only after you’ve satisfied yourself that they contain factual information vetted by responsible reporters. When anonymous people behave badly in the name of a candidate, you should presume that they’re not actually supporters of that candidate or even necessarily supporters of the Democratic Party or even necessarily American citizens. Pointing at their bad behavior and sharing it widely to harm a candidate is likely to be exactly what they want you to do.”
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2019/2/20/16554/1234
Jay
@Brickley Paiste:
Tell your Comrade we know the old nyms that are shit stirrers and Russian trolls ( cough, cough) and are wary of new nyms posting shit stirring right out of the gate.
Some of us know each other.
satby
@Immanentize: @FlyingToaster (Tablet): TOTUS = Traitor of the U.S. (Like POTUS is President of..).
satby
@piratedan: for starters NEVER call it Chi-town.
J R in WV
Personally, I vote for Chicago, which I spent a lot of time in in 1970, when I was in training at Great Lakes Naval Base, and took the train into town most weekends. With a round trip train ticket, you were good to go for rock concerts, museums, art, architecture, etc, etc.
Of course I had no dogs or cats, not even a local girlfriend, and was making something like $90 a month. So YMMV… still, Chicago has culture, Harrisburg do not.
Don’t know about Tacoma, sounds interesting. Atlanta, meh… a tiny oasis in bright red rural Georgia.
satby
@J R in WV: of course I’m biased, but Chicago is the best city in the ? ?
satby
@piratedan: look on the South Side in the Beverly -Mt Greenwood, or the neighboring suburbs of Evergreen Park and Oak Lawn or Alsip. Affordable housing stock, multiracial safe neighborhoods, on public transportation including buses to trains directly into downtown. There’s a variety of housing stock at all sorts of prices, from higher end Beverly in the city to more affordable suburbs. My former home was in Beverly, my son and daughter in law still live in it. I honestly wish I had never left.
piratedan
@satby: tyvm!
Ben Cisco
@piratedan: I’ve spent enough time there to know one thing: you need a coat FROM THERE FOR THERE!
satby
@piratedan: as far as multiple pets, I had as many as four dogs plus four inside cats when I lived in Beverly. All the houses have yards, some very large lots for an urban area. I was over the legal limit but never got in trouble because they were quiet, the neighbors didn’t complain, and animal control knew I was with a rescue group. Chicago is pretty pet and rescue friendly for a big city. And you get used to the weather.
trnc
@J R in WV:
IIRC, Strauss was a reporter at TPM for a while. I don’t remember his reporting being out of line with TPM, but I think his writing had a lot of epic copy/paste fails.