Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

I like you, you’re my kind of trouble.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

“Squeaker” McCarthy

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

The republican caucus is already covering themselves with something, and it’s not glory.

I did not have this on my fuck 2022 bingo card.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the GOP

Accountability, motherfuckers.

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

Eh, that’s media spin. biden’s health is fine and he’s doing a good job.

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

Consistently wrong since 2002

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

Conservatism: there are some people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

Infrastructure week. at last.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

People are complicated. Love is not.

You are here: Home / Past Elections / 2020 Elections / Friday Night Fights Open Thread: But the Media Village Idiots Miss Their Tire Swings!

Friday Night Fights Open Thread: But the Media Village Idiots Miss Their Tire Swings!

by | 145 Comments

This post is in: , , , ,

“Calling a lid” is professional jargon for ‘no more press interviews today’. Biden and his team have some other tasks in mind than inviting the Very Serious Media Representatives to private convos — preferably with donuts, in folksy/intimate settings! — so the V.S.M.R. are having a massive public group hissy-fit.

When these lazy bastids whine How can we do our jobs, if Biden won’t personally meet with us?… they’re admitting they’re stenographers, not reporters. It’s not as though there wasn’t enough new political material available every day to keep expensivly-credentialed, highly-paid professionals busy; *I* can’t find time or space to cover half the interesting stories, and I’m a mere poster on a not-quite-top-10,000 blog!


Back in the good old days…

Extra-credit FTFNYTimes, in particular:

Reader Interactions

145Comments

  3. 3.

    HumboldtBlue

    I followed a couple of these threads and in every single thread one of the top three or four comments was video of Biden or Harris answering questions to local reporters, sitting for local TV interviews are speaking with a national reporter.

    Every single time.

  4. 4.

    Tim Now Sir Simon Poshlord

    Is it possible Trump was right that one time?

    That the media really are enemies of the people?

    Discuss.

  9. 9.

    David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch

    They’re more upset about Biden not holding their hand than Dump calling them “enemy of the people” and “fake news” and cheering violence against the press.

    Libuerl media bias, indeed.

  15. 15.

    piratedan

    and none of them seek to question… why is he “putting a lid on it” at such an early hour and I sit back and look at the carnage that is being wrought in our country every damn day that these governmental charlatans are in charge of and I wonder, why they fuck does he talk to them at all, considering what all has to be undone, not just at home but abroad.

    My god where is my precious access so I can ask you something that is straight of the Faux News infopoint framework that matters a grandiose fuckall while black citizens are being murdered by the police in their cities, half of the western united states is on fucking fire or has burnt down and that we have 200k deaths on the current tally thanks to a pandemic that the current POTUS is doing nothing about, other than screwing with the numbers to try and make himself look better.

    If I wasn’t so enraged at the GOP for being busy little bees of wanton societal and environmental destruction, I’d take a baseball bat to their fucking knees and ask them in comparison to the pain, how do they feel about the poll numbers coming out in Iowa?

  17. 17.

    Kay

    val_mccabe
    @val_mccabe
    ·52m
    James Herbert, a sitting Assistant United States Attorney has penned a letter to the Boston Globe which says Attorney General William Barr “has brought shame on the department he purports to lead.” The letter can be found in its entirety here:

    Finally. One of them stands up. Bravo.

    Maybe it will stiffen the spine of some more- there’s strength in numbers.

  18. 18.

    cckids

    @Baud:Those whiny tweets are atrocious.

    This.  How in the world do they manage to get through each day?? Do they not have any actual issues in their lives?

    Whinging makes me crazy.

  20. 20.

    David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch

    When Comey blew up the election in 2016 it was at 4 PM eastern on a Friday afternoon (with the Cubs in the World Series later that day) and the Vichy Times had no problem finding the time to change the entire front page to Hillary hate for the next morning’s edition.

  21. 21.

    Kay

    I’ve come around to thinking we should kiss their ass and maybe get the kind of coverage Republicans do. What’s the real harm? Biden’s fine with them- I haven’t seen him struggle to answer any of their questions. I know it’s annoying because they phrase everything as a response to whatever nonsense and lies Trump is spouting but in that case Biden can use them as a kind of Trump proxy.

  23. 23.

    TS (the original)

    wow i can't believe joe biden is in charge of everything and abdicating his responsibility by calling it a day to do debate prep for his debate which is a normal thing candidates do in advance of a debate— Erik the Rural Juror (@EDoggTheRed) September 24, 2020

    he should be out there solving the pandemic and the civil unrest and the unemployment and the many foreign policy crises with the power vested in him to do none of those things— Erik the Rural Juror (@EDoggTheRed) September 24, 2020

    but i don't know maybe he was really rushed to walter reed hospital for some sort of a medical event that will never really ever be explained, maybe that's actually what's happening— Erik the Rural Juror (@EDoggTheRed) September 24, 2020

  26. 26.

    Goku (Amerikan Baka)

    @Alison Rose:

    Well, I was going to ask if these people ever read criticism of their work, but I guess that answers my question. What a childish dick

  27. 27.

    Mike G

    The incumbent gloats about reporters being assaulted and wounded by cops while doing their job, while the challenger committed a perceived slight to their Very Important Status.

    “BOTh cAmPaigNS DON’t rEsPEcT thE prESS”

  30. 30.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    Biden is going to be more conventional than Trump, so they aren’t going to get any threats of a coup or weird vitriolic attacks on ordinary people or insane conspiracy theories. Thank God.

    They’ll just have to get used to “peaceful and sane and orderly” :)

  31. 31.

    Goku (Amerikan Baka)

    @Baud:

    Oh it gets better:

    Kombiz Lavasany

    @kombiz

    Sep 23

    I think Sam has earned one bad tweet a day

    Kombiz Lavasany

    @kombiz

    Sep 23

    yes, what matt said about the larger point but I did think that there’s nothing wrong with being the squeaky wheel and you should definitely get a sit down with Biden.

    Sam Stein
    @samstein
    Sep 23

    Kombiz is so much smarter than you Matt

  33. 33.

    Bill Arnold

    Open thread, so interesting easy-to-read piece (with some links to longer material). Not scaremongering, just saying we should prep in advance for street actions, strikes, etc, while working towards a resounding electoral win.
    10 things you need to know to stop a coup – While keeping people focused on a strong, robust election process is a must, we also need to prepare for a coup. (Daniel Hunter, September 18, 2020)

    We know it’s a coup if the government:
    – Stops counting votes;
    – Declares someone a winner who didn’t get the most votes; or
    – Allows someone to stay in power who didn’t win the election.
    These are sensible red lines that people can grasp right away (and that the majority of Americans continue to believe in).
    People who do power grabs always claim they’re doing it to save democracy or claim they know the “real” election results. So this doesn’t have to look like a military coup with one leader ordering the opposition to be arrested.

  35. 35.

    Ken

    One campaign won’t let the press use the tire swing, one campaign is pretty close to inciting supporters to use a tire to necklace a member of the press.  Perfect equivalence.

  36. 36.

    dmsilev

    @Kay:

     

    A spokesperson for the US attorney’s office in Massachusetts confirms to @AaronKatersky that Herbert remains employed with their office. His letter states that Barr’s speech last week at Hillsdale College prompted him to take the extraordinary step of speaking out publicly. https://t.co/3paBPFv1cD— Alex Mallin (@alex_mallin) September 25, 2020

    ‘Remains employed’ for now anyway. I salute him; he’s taking a real risk to speak out.

  37. 37.

    Goku (Amerikan Baka)

    @Kay:

    The sad thing is that I’ve never been able to find any criticism (that isn’t of the wingnut variety) of Chozick outside of Ballon Juice and maybe LGM.

    Wasn’t she even getting a streaming series based on her memoir, “Chasing Clinton” or whatever the fuck it was called?

  39. 39.

    Kay

    @Bill Arnold:

    I took time out of work. Just in case :)

    I will show up. I don’t know how helpful I’ll be but someone tells me where to go I’ll be there. I think solidarity is powerful.

  40. 40.

    Kay

    @Goku (Amerikan Baka):

    I was afraid I was being unfair (shocking, I know) so I went back and looked at her work- the coverage. It was actually worse than I remembered.

    They probably shouldn’t have used an anti-Clinton book as the template for their coverage. That’s a tad unfair, don’t you think? Not to mention lazy.

  41. 41.

    Goku (Amerikan Baka)

    @Kay:

    She even wrote this piece of shit in the NYT

    “Why Trump Will Win a Second Term”

    What a title, right? I didn’t even bother reading it. Designed to be clickbait. It was written two months before the 2018 Blue Wave that gave the Dems several governorships and control of the House. I really don’t get why people like Chozick or think she’s some kind of expert on Hillary Clinton or her 2016 campaign

  43. 43.

    Sab

    I remember, on one of his previous campaigns for President, Biden showed up in NE Ohio and scheduled a press conference with all the NE Ohio press. Only one reporter showed up, and that guy was a National Guardsman and Iraq War veteran. I think he only showed up out of respect for Beau’s service.

    I don’t think Biden has a spiteful bone in his body, but doesn’t owe our press anything. The guy who shwed up to the press conference osn’t a reporter any more. He’s now teaching journalism at same school as Connie Schultz.

  46. 46.

    Kay

    @Goku (Amerikan Baka):

    Amy Chozick
    By Amy Chozick
    Ms. Chozick is a writer at large for The Times covering business, politics and media.
    Sept. 29, 2018
    When Mike Fleiss, the creator of “The Bachelor” and “Who Wants to Marry a Multimillionaire?” helped pioneer reality television in the early 2000s, he quickly realized that for any show to work, the audience needed to feel invested. “Whenever you’re developing one of these shows, you have to find stakes — true love or a million dollars,” Mr. Fleiss said

    Then 200,000 people died and it wasn’t such a zany, madcap romp anymore. Not at all like reality tv. Just reality.

  47. 47.

    Goku (Amerikan Baka)

    @Kay:

    Yeah, it is lazy. At the very least. I don’t get why people think she’s a liberal or Clinton defender. Hillary Haters tend to think that of Chozick. I have no idea why

  48. 48.

    patrick II

    Typhoid Trump is holding a near maskless rally of thousands in Newport News today. I live in Virginia Beach and expect local cases to increase. He seems to be in a competition to see how many people he can kill before he leaves office.

  51. 51.

    Jeffro

    @Kay: “he’ll shake things up” – every privileged, barely-invested comfortable moron who tipped the scales back in 2016

  53. 53.

    Jeffro

    @patrick II: it really should be a Biden & Co campaign theme from here on out: “He keeps having these super-spreader events to salve his ego and pretend that everything is normal.  Well…(roll Woodward tape re: airborne transmission, etc)…there’s no easy way to put this, trumpov supporters, but frankly some of you are going to die just so he doesn’t have to face his monumental failure.”

  54. 54.

    VidaLoca

    Here’s something I don’t get.  Y’all hate on the media, all the media, all the time.  Particularly theNew York Times, and well you should. They mostly do a terrible job both from the point of view of journalism straight-up and from the point of view of liberal journalism, or at least treating liberal issues from a journalistic point of view that seems fair. You have a legitimate case.

    But you seem to expect a corporate media infrastructure whose interests run counter to the professed interests of Democrats, and your own interests as well first and foremost, to treat those interests fairly. This is the definition of insanity. And your continued complaining comes off as, well, whiny. They aren’t going to change. Ever. They’ll ignore your whining and your venting until hell freezes over so you have to do more than vent if you want anything to change. So do you have any power here that you’re overlooking?

    I saw a post from Doug J the other day, claiming that y’all were raising nearly $10K/day for Democratic candidates in the election. $10K/day is approaching serious money. But in about 5 weeks the election will be over. Could you use that $10K/day for something beyond that point? Could you have an impact on the world of journalism? Maybe you could:

    1. Do journalism at Balloon Juice. That would be a terrible idea, nobody would be happy.

    2. Fund an existing source of journalism that more or less agrees with your point of view. That would seem like the easiest thing to do. Talking Points Memo comes to mind, and the politics there agrees a lot with your own as a group. $10K, even $5K/day might allow them to expand their operation significantly. You could reach out and ask. But you’d have to be serious about sustaining any cash flow you’d set up, if Josh were to hire people on with the expectation that you had his back, and then you bailed it would not be a good look.
    3. Start doing journalism yourselves. That would seem like the most interesting thing to do. You’ve got people who can write, you’d have to find more but it’s a start. You’ve got platforms like YouTube and podcasts that you can take advantage of, that don’t require a huge capital investment to get off the ground. You’d have to figure out how to cover your costs — is there a market for news covered from a liberal Democratic point of view?

    You’d have to pick 6-8 people from among yourselves that really care about this issue who can work through the implementation details to get an idea like this off the ground. That would be effectively the editorial board of the operation. The rest of you would have to decide how much you’re really willing to put your money where your mouth is, consistently. You’d have to agree on a political vision and that might be even harder than the fundraising.

    None of this would be easy, you might fail, but you’d be doing something. Which beats doing nothing.

  56. 56.

    WaterGirl

    @dmsilev: I agree.  But if he’s put in 30 years there as he says, I’m guessing he can retire if it comes to that.  Which I suppose is a bit of a luxury when you get to “enough is enough”.

  57. 57.

    Kay

    @debbie:

    Honestly that ridiculous stunt they pulled shouldn’t scare anyone. It fell apart in 8 hours like I knew it would. It reeked of bullshit from the get-go. They weren’t even smart enough to resist announcing that the ballots were “Trump votes”, just so everyone is absolutely sure they’re corrupt hacks.  If that’s the Best and the Brightest in Trumpworld we will be fine.

    I think the ethical attorneys are genuinely mourning the loss of credibility of the institution, and that’s a real loss, but the silly and poorly planned and executed stunt itself shouldn’t scare anyone. It’s just embarrassing.  Planned at the highest levels, too! Barr was reporting to Trump.

    It came off about as well as the elaborate plan to sink Biden with Ukraine. Imagine how many hours they put in on that. They managed to get the President impeached.

  58. 58.

    mrmoshpotato

    When these lazy bastids whine How can we do our jobs, if Biden won’t personally meet with us?… they’re admitting they’re stenographers, not reporters. It’s not as though there wasn’t enough new political material available every day to keep expensivly-credentialed, highly-paid professionals busy

    Hell.  They could investigate the Soviet shitpile mobster conman’s over 30 years of mob ties!

    How about it Mags?

  61. 61.

    J R in WV

    @VidaLoca:

    Did a search, you have been commenting sparsely for years, 520 posts over the years according to Google search. Why do you bother? What’s in it for you?

    Where are you when you aren’t commenting here, the vast majority of the time? Who are you? Where are you from, what did you study in school, did you go to college at all?

    Your prose is well written, but pointless. Go back to where you stay, under the rock that keeps you pressed to the ground. You have nothing to say to me, whatsoever. An address in St Petersburg, RU? We will never know for sure… nor care.

  62. 62.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @VidaLoca: I saw a post from Doug J the other day, claiming that y’all were raising nearly $10K/day for Democratic candidates in the election. $10K/day is approaching serious money. But in about 5 weeks the election will be over. Could you use that $10K/day for something beyond that point? Could you have an impact on the world of journalism?

    My guess is that $10K/day is something that this blog can do for a short time.  I would doubt that it is sustainable over the long term.

  63. 63.

    Kay

    HHS has defended the campaign as proper and insisted that it will not be co-opted by political pressures. “There is no room for political spin in the messages and materials designed by HHS to help Americans make informed decisions about the prevention and treatment of Covid-19 and flu,” said Mark Weber, a career HHS public affairs official, in a statement. Caputo delegated the project to Weber before taking medical leave.

    God, just resign, Mr. Weber. It is really unfair to demand the US public pay him for campaigning for Donald Trump. Go away. Stop stealing from us. 200,000 of us are dead and we’re tired of being robbed by these fucking crooks and hacks.
    What about “theft”? Is there a federal criminal statute that covers “stealing”? There must be. Use that one.
    Mr. Weber is stealing 300 million dollars from the public. Someone stop him before he gets away.

  65. 65.

    WaterGirl

    @J R in WV:  I think you are mistaken about VidaLoca.

    Unless I’m thinking of someone else, I VidaLoca may have done some guest posting here over the years.

    She is most definitely not a troll, nor is she (I believe she is female) a Russian troll.

  66. 66.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @J R in WV: VidaLoca is a community organizer in Milwaukee.  S/he is doing real work on the ground.  You may disagree with the comment, but don’t be a fucking asshole.  Throwing accusations of being a Russian bot is insulting and unwarranted.   If you’d bothered to read some of the 520 comments VidaLoca has posted, you’d fucking know that.

  67. 67.

    Goku (Amerikan Baka)

    @Kay:

    Christ, Dennis Quaid! When was the last time he a leading man in anything? 2000? Seems like an eternity ago. And who the hell is the singer? I guess they couldn’t do any better than washed up has-beens and nobodies

    Weber is a career HHS official too. Was he always a hack? That question always comes to mind when I find out career bureaucrats do this shit

  69. 69.

    patrick Il

    @Geminid:

    I don’t know. I thought she was doing well, but lately there has been a barrage of negative ads. I just saw one on Maddow connecting her to Pelosi, and another claiming she took five million for personal use, and another claiming she is not a congressman but an actor, two in the last hour. I don’t know where the money is coming from, but they must feel she is vulnerable.

  70. 70.

    prostratedragon

    @Goku (Amerikan Baka):  CeCe Winans is a well-known gospel singer from a singing family, who has occasionally forayed into pop. Big disappointment to see her involved in  this. Ditto Garth Brooks actually, though I long suspected he had GOP sympathies; he’s never trumpeted (!) them before.

  73. 73.

    Kay

    @prostratedragon:

    It reads a little funny, like they may not have actual commitments for the two singers. As you know, they lie constantly, and the announcements never- literally never- live up to the hype they sell.

    I’d wait and see who actually takes part. They lie. Always and all of them.

  74. 74.

    zhena gogolia

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    I liked the suggestion. But I think we’re all too busy to do it. It’s one thing to write little snarky comments when you’re at the end of a working day. It’s another to try to mount a journalistic operation.

  75. 75.

    Morzer

    Apparently Joe Lieberman’s son is even worse than expected:

    https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/09/matt-lieberman-bad-english-teacher-bad-candidate.html

    [Lieberman’s self-published] book, Lucius, is a portrait of the narrator’s fraught friendship with an elderly white man who has an imaginary slave. According to HuffPost, it “regularly deploys the N-word.” I am not going to read this entire book, which was so offensive that it prompted the Georgia NAACP to demand he end his campaign.

  77. 77.

    Goku (Amerikan Baka)

    @prostratedragon:

    Garth Brooks, too? Damn. Eh, his brand of country music hasn’t really been popular since like 2005 or so.

    I hope these celebrities get the deserved slagging. And that Congress will investigate this politicized ad campaign

  78. 78.

    HumboldtBlue

    If you’d like to read the writing of an outstanding local journalist and food writer let me introduce you to Jennifer Fumiko-Cahill.

    Jenn’s an extraordinary woman and a wonderful writer and storyteller.

    We are elated to announce today that North Coast Journal arts and features editor Jennifer Fumiko Cahill won the Association of Alternative Newsmedia’s 2020 award for best food writing, while the paper’s Media Literacy Issue took second place for best special section.

    The nonprofit association includes nearly 100 member papers throughout the country, including many of the nation’s largest weeklies, and its annual journalism awards honor the best work of its membership ranks.

    Cahill, who has served as the Journal’s arts and features editor since 2013, was named a finalist in the food writing category — one of the contest’s most competitive, having drawn more than three dozen entries — for three pieces she penned last year.

  80. 80.

    Kay

    Michael McDonald
    @ElectProject
    ·1h
    Around this time in 2016, I was tracking 9,525 early votes. This year, at least 780,065 people have already voted
    We have never seen anything like this in American politics

    I get mad but honestly if I step back my overall sense is something good is building. It just feels like that. I have never seen Democrats this energized and I have been watching (like many of you) for a long time.
    I think they’re gonna blow the doors off. I know you’re all superstitious so we all must mope around and “complacency!” or whatever but that’s what I think :)

  84. 84.

    Kay

    @zhena gogolia:

    So great that he inherited his father’s scolding sanctimony. His responses to the calls for him not to be the spoiler are absolutely insufferable. He’s doing it For Democracy.

  86. 86.

    prostratedragon

    @Kay:  Oh now that’s interesting. I confess to having just glanced at an announcement I saw elsewhere, but now that you mention there have been performers withdrawing from their events with prejudice, haven’t there.

  87. 87.

    Goku (Amerikan Baka)

    @Jay:

    I swear to god I always regret going on Twitter. Just a few clicks and I get to read about how Critical Race Theory is a totally divisive ideology that is distracting organizations from their missions; that this is how systems collapse

    I mean, it’s like peeking into an alternate universe

  89. 89.

    James E Powell

    @VidaLoca:

    I get what you’re saying and I don’t disagree, but would point out that comments here are just us talking. Some of it is venting. We aren’t thinking what we say here is going to have impact in that world outside. Or at least I don’t think we do.

    The idea that pages on the internet could replace the established sources of news was the cause of much excitement in the early days of blogs. That idea did not pan out. Everything turned into Huffington Post, Great Orange Satan, or just died out. I still lament the end of firejoemorgan.com.

    I don’t think blogs, internet pages, podcasts, or youtube or anything else are going to replace the legacy media until those media meet their demise. It’s an event I pray for every day.

    And I have thought about doing some journalism myself, but people tell me I’m too gloomy.

  90. 90.

    Ruckus

    I go away for a bit and this is what I come back to?

    We are all so tied up in the bullshit that is a part of daily life in the US after 3 1/2 yrs of a complete and utter bullshitter that we question regular commenters? I mean I know that I’m pissed off and tired and angry and pissed off and – yeah I’m that pissed off. After the fires and all that entails for the entire west coast, after all the political illegality and politics and elections and shitforbrains thinking he can be dictator for life, and that it’s not getting better for months, and covid and just getting old, I’m fucking tired of all the added on bullshit on top of just life. I need a change something, anything better than this. And I’d bet all the money in the world that I’m not alone in this.

    We’ve done pretty good, what with the donating and Claire and bucking each other up. Let’s not let all the bullshit settle here and keep us from at least trying. VidaLoca makes a suggestion about maybe making things better, not in a way I would have suspected but I’d bet in a way that JC might have had in the back of his mind a long time ago. Public journalism. Got to be better than FTFNYT and all the other outlets that look at the dollar as the leading light in journalism. Or anything else.

    I’m in, even if all I ever get to do is stand back and clap.

  91. 91.

    Another Scott

    @patrick Il: Taylor’s desperate.

    https://bluevirginia.us/2020/09/video-elaine-for-congress-releases-new-television-ad-scare-about-scott-taylors-continued-intimidation-tactics

    In March of this year the first Taylor campaign staffer indicted pleaded guilty to election fraud charges related to 2018 attempts to get third party candidate Shaun Brown on the ballot with fraudulent signatures in the 2018 election. Shortly thereafter, a second staffer was indicted on two counts of election fraud, her trial is slated for This Thursday in Virginia Beach.

    Shortly before the third indictment of another of his staffers, Scott Taylor threatened legal action against the Luria campaign for even mentioning that he himself was under investigation. Commonwealth’s Attorney John Beamer confirmed to 13 News Now that Taylor was under investigation and about Taylor’s claims to the contrary said, “No, that’s not true. The entire campaign is under investigation.”

    What a monstrous piece of work. Grrr….

    https://secure.actblue.com/donate/luriawebsite20

    https://secure.actblue.com/donate/spanberger_website

    https://secure.actblue.com/contribute/page/wextonforcongress/

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  94. 94.

    dmsilev

    It is possible, albeit rare, for media idiots to wake up and see what is going on. Exhibit A: Dana Milbank. Here’s his column from today:

    This is not a drill. The Reichstag is burning.

    America, this is not a drill. The Reichstag is burning.

    For five years, my colleagues and I have taken pains to avoid Nazi comparisons. It is usually hyperbolic, and counterproductive, to label the right “fascists” in the way those on the right reflexively label the left “socialists.” But this is no longer a matter of name-calling. With his repeated refusals this week to accept the peaceful transfer of power — the bedrock principle that has sustained American democracy for 228 years — President Trump has put the United States, in some ways, where Germany was in 1933, when Adolf Hitler used the suspicious burning of the German parliament to turn a democracy into a totalitarian state.

     

    Let’s be clear. There is only one political party in American politics embracing violence. There is only one side refusing to denounce all political violence. There is only one side talking about bringing guns to the polls; one side attempting to turn federal law-enforcement officials into an arm of a political party. And Trump is trying to use law enforcement to revive tactics historically used to bully voters of color from voting — tactics not seen in 40 years.

    Some of what Trump and his lieutenants have been doing is merely unseemly: using the machinery of government to attack previous and current political opponents, likening pandemic public health restrictions to slavery, or threatening to overrule regulators if they question the safety of vaccines.

    But embracing violence to resolve democratic disagreement is another matter. Trump embraced the “very fine people” among the homicidal neo-Nazis in Charlottesville. He embraced as “very good people” armed protesters who stormed the Michigan Capitol to intimidate lawmakers. He embraced his supporter who allegedly shot and killed two people at a protest in Wisconsin. He embraced the “GREAT PATRIOTS” who drove into Portland, Ore., hurling paintballs and pepper spray at demonstrators. He embraced officers who kill unarmed African Americans, saying they simply “choke” under pressure.

    (I took out all of the internal links because it’d trigger the spambot, but the column is filled with links to the original stories documenting the various atrocities)

  95. 95.

    Bill Arnold

    @Goku (Amerikan Baka):

    I swear to god I always regret going on Twitter.

    One approach is to focus your attention on media figures. High leverage if you successfully influence them, and their reply volumes are often low enough that they read some of them.

  96. 96.

    Kay

    Dave Wasserman
    @Redistrict
    ·6h
    Something everyone needs to be prepared for: viral, propagandistic and false insinuations of election misconduct.
    This is an especially complicated, fraught election for election officials to administer. Mistakes will be made – and overwhelmingly *not* out of nefarious intent.

    I love what he feels he can’t say here- that the US Department of Justice made the propagandistic and false insinuations and had nefarious intent and it was the local actors who were operating in good faith.
    Must make this passive. These insinuations just…. appeared. Must pretend we don’t know who did this.

  98. 98.

    Aleta

    Marc E. Elias @marceelias

     The FULL Fourth Circuit (en banc) reinstates our earlier victory in South Carolina striking down the state’s witness requirement for absentee ballots. Big victory for @DCCC @TheDemocrats and the voters of SC.

    We had THREE major wins tonight in TEXAS, MONTANA and SOUTH CAROLINA!  Each time we knock down a suppressive voting law, we get a little closer to a free and fair election.

    In just a few hours, our voting rights litigation impacted FIVE different voting laws in THREE different states—MONTANA, SOUTH CAROLINA, and TEXAS!

  100. 100.

    Ruckus

    @James E Powell:

    Those blogs did not pan out because they became online versions of  most current newspapers. They went into profit/loss mode and their product can’t be made into a fish wrap, so it’s value is limited. I don’t think that’s what VidaLoca had in mind. At least what I see is a more limited type of journalism, because people work and most aren’t looking for an actual job. More of a clearing house for journalistic work in groups might be a more logical system. IOW not a staff writer but people working together to create a story, group journalism if you will. Because that might just work.

  101. 101.

    Jeffro

    @dmsilev: I was just racing over here to post that piece!  Thanks!

    Milbank is just so spot-on these days.  It’s like the Never Trumpers and Former Villagers – some of them – had a serious awakening this past year.

    More power to them!

  103. 103.

    Ian

    Imagine how this election would be getting covered it every journalist had to wear a face mask for eight hours straight five days a week. 

    Good start.  I can accept that.  I will also take “every person who voted against relief for poor and middle class” in this category.  I think that with times as hard as they are, maybe forty hours isn’t enough.  How does overtime mask hours work?

  105. 105.

    Jay

    @Goku (Amerikan Baka):

    always stick to the prime tweet by trusted ( yours) sources,

    keep in mind that twitter is immediate, so hot takes may be wrong, “breaking news” probably contains errors,

    Stay out of comments, other than to comment, as uncurated comments are filled with trolls, algorithms, anger and hate.

  106. 106.

    Kay

    @Jeffro:

    It’s really more and more two camps. The people who are grim and concerned and determined and the people who still think this is some zany, wild ride they can get off anytime they want, like there’s somewhere “normal” they can go.

  107. 107.

    Another Scott

    @dmsilev:  He was pretty good about going after Comey in October 2016 – WaPo:

    By Dana MilbankOctober 31, 2016
    “Transparency is the absolute best thing for me and for democracy.”

    — FBI Director James Comey, July 2016

    “[Crickets.]”

    — FBI Director James Comey, October 2016

    FBI chief James Comey, until recently an adherent of the view that transparency is the best policy, has been hidden from public view since Friday, when he threw the nation and the election into chaos by reopening the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails. His vague letter to Congress admitted he didn’t know “whether or not this [new] material may be significant.”

    Since Comey, in his refusal to explain himself, apparently no longer believes in transparency, he leaves it to our imagination to wonder what he thinks. So let’s take him up on this. Let’s imagine what a fully transparent Comey might say about the mess he made:

    […]

    But I thought my fellow Republicans would appreciate a makeup call rewarding months of badgering the ref. Instead I get Benghazi Jim Jordan, the Republican congressman from Ohio and honorary chairman of the Hillary-hater caucus, saying, “This was probably not the right thing for Comey to do.”

    Thanks, buddy. Similar stuff from Larry Thompson, George Terwilliger, Michael Mukasey — even Karl Rove, per Fox News’s Bill Hemmer. And that loudmouth Joe Walsh says I was “wrong” and “unfair to Hillary.” Fox’s Judge Jeanine Pirro thinks what I did “disgraces and politicizes” the FBI and violates “the most fundamental rules of fairness and impartiality.” And she’s for Trump!

    But this really gets me: Gonzales is using this to take his revenge for that night in the hospital. Mr. Torture thinks I made an “error in judgment” and he’s “somewhat perplexed about what the director was trying to accomplish here.”

    [..]

    !!!

    Was it really only 4 years ago when those RWNJs were saying such things? Yes, yes it was.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  108. 108.

    Kay

    In the effort led by President Trump to create a misleading impression of widespread voter fraud, administration and campaign officials have seized on nine mail-in military ballots in a Pennsylvania county that Mr. Trump won by 20 points in 2016.
    Federal officials have disclosed that they are investigating whether local elections officials improperly discarded the ballots, at least seven of which were cast for Mr. Trump, they said. A Justice Department official said on Friday that Attorney General William P. Barr briefed Mr. Trump this week on the case.
    The disclosure of the investigation’s existence was highly unusual and came as Mr. Trump has ramped up his false assertions that widespread mail-in voting is rife with fraud. It prompted elections and legal experts to express fears that political appointees were using the levers of law enforcement to undermine voters’ confidence in the results of the election.

    Ya think? I’m surprised only by how clumsy and stupid the scheme was. I’m pleased they’re all such lazy morons. If the crooks were smarter and harder-working we might not be able to beat them.
    This is going as well for Barr as teargassing the protesters and then lying about it went. Another genius diabolical scheme by the AG that unraveled in 8 hours and is now just pathetic.

  110. 110.

    James E Powell

    @Ruckus:

    I kind of see it working in areas other than politics. For people who follow movies, TV, music, and sports, there are sources not affiliated with Big Media that turn out quality work and draw fairly big numbers.

    What might work is, as you say, groups of people working together. I’d expect it would work on intense local government coverage more easily than national stories

    I still want the Village destroyed and the New York Times reduced to a local paper.

  111. 111.

    Marcopolo

    @Kay:   Agreed.  I have 3 twitter feeds I check every day since they are generally full of good news.

    I check McDonald’s twitter feed two or three times over the course of the day.  Seeing all this early voting is cathartic.  I’ll be sending an email out to my friends when we hit 1% of the 2016 turnout: ~1.4M votes

    Then there is Marc Elias’ twitter.  He’s the election law lawyer who is part of the group counterfiling against R attempts to interfere with voting across the country.  His folks had 3 big wins today:  1) Texas has been told they have to allow party line voting on ballots (which both makes it easier to vote in a state with lots of candidates on the ballot & speeds up voting); 2) Montana–ballot collecting will be allowed; ballots postmarked by Eday will be counted if returned by the following Monday; faulty ballots can be cured up to nine days after Eday; and 3) South Carolina: the courts struck down a state requirement for witness signatures on mail ballots.

    Last but not least I look at Amanda Litman’s twitter because her group, RunForSomething is all about electing folks to down ballot offices.  They have recruited and are supporting over 500 candidates running running for office at the state & local level in 2020.  These candidates, who are young, often BIPOC, and just fresh are fun to read about and they inspire and encourage me in regards to where we can be in 10-20-30 years if we make sure  there’s an infrastructure in place to elect these folks.

  112. 112.

    VidaLoca

    @James E Powell:

    But the situation we’re in at the moment, as everyone here sees, is dire.  And one of the many problems we face is that the right wing dominates the ideological space.  They consolidated that position in the middle 1980’s with “less government / lower taxes / free enterprise / personal responsibility.”  That’s a world view that you can put on a bumper sticker.  It didn’t work, of course, which is why they’ve fallen back on “Make America Great Again.”  Another world view you can put on a bumper sticker.

    And, I don’t know what liberalism offers to counter that, but I do think that y’all are right in noting that the machinery that enables it is the corporate media — the right-wing media is a sewer, the centrists are constantly hippie-punching. If we’re going to get out of the mess we’re in we have to start innovating our way forward because to leave it to our enemies is not working.

    Here’s an innovation in the ideological space. If you take the time to look at it, start at about 12 minutes in because the intro music goes on forever. And as innovations go some of you may not agree with it but I think you should recognize that they’re trying to solve one of the most difficult problems we face as a society and doing it by putting forward a view point that you won’t see covered in the New York Times.

    We can’t wait for the NYT and the like to die, at that rate we’ll be dead long before they are.

  113. 113.

    Jeffro

    @dmsilev: god yeah – it would almost have had to, wouldn’t it?  Cilizza improves nothing by his presence.  It’s like a minor version of ‘everything trumpov touches dies’

  115. 115.

    Jeffro

    @Kay: people who see the situation for what it is, and people who just can’t quite wrap their heads around it, true.

    A little realism would go a long way here, national snooze media.  Why weren’t we in this place four years ago?  Was Hillz talking about mail-in ballots being illegitimate?  Did the Dems start showing up at statehouses bearing arms before/during/after the election?  Did Obama’s DOJ go nuts trying to arrest protestors – of any kind, ever – as if they were enemies of the state?

    No?

    So maybe a little different than now.

  116. 116.

    Ivan X

    Some days I feel like I’m going to make it. Other days I don’t. Sadly those often correspond to when I intake news, including from here, and I’m trying to limit myself, or even cut myself off. But then I feel lonely. It’s a difficult time.

  118. 118.

    Geminid

    @VidaLoca: You’re right, there is a lot of griping about national media here, especially about the Times. And it is weird to see how people get so strung out about the pernicious effects of opinion pieces that they themselves can see right through. Maybe people are too caught up in the big national stories in national print and internet media, and wasting time on the omnipresent analysis, time that could be better spent reading good basic reporting.        If I want to know what’s going on with Sharice Davids, or Xochitl Torres-Small, or Steve Bullock, I can’t rely on national media to report it, but I can find  plenty of sharp reporting at the state and local level. So, I don’t think there is a need for Balloon Juice to set up a journalism shop. There is enough good news reporting out there already, if people will just go get it.

  119. 119.

    Mike in NC

    Aren’t we all now nostalgic for those crazy stories about tire swings that feel like it happened 50 years ago?

  120. 120.

    James E Powell

    @Marcopolo:

    I follow 30 people on twitter. If I add somebody, I drop somebody else.

    The key to my sanity has been that I only follow one political person at a time. Lately it’s been Jennifer Rubin. Before that it was Norm Ornstein.

  121. 121.

    Jay

    @Ruckus:

    These days, most of the journalism I consume is from small citizen supported “digital collectives”, like The Tyee, Bellingcat, or “citizen journalists” like Taila Lavin or Robert Evans, supported by Patreon funding.

    Quite often, their “breaking stories” get “frontpaged” by the MSM, or just ripped off by the MSM.

  123. 123.

    Marcopolo

    @James E Powell:   Well, I’m not actually on twitter but I check out 8-10 folks on a daily basis just by typing their twitter nym into my browser since it remembers places I’ve been.  Then I can decide how much of their stuff I want to view.  In general I really don’t like  to join things and the only place I post comments on line is here at BJ and very sporadically in the comments section on articles published in the local paper.

  124. 124.

    Eolirin

    @VidaLoca: I’m skeptical any approach to replacing or presenting an alternative to national media can actually be successful.

    The thing that really kills us with the national media is also the thing that makes it work; very large numbers of people are seeing the same content. The internet fundamentally does not work like this. It’s heavily balkanized and individual communities mostly talk amongst themselves rather than being able to bridge out into a diverse cross section of people.

    Most attempts at alternate media consequently become preaching to the choir. You need to get picked up by another existing source that has a more diverse audience to get out of that echo chamber.

    I feel like our resources are almost always better spent on grassroots organizing, direct local action, and in person real world efforts. We can push for regulatory changes to media and possibly different funding mechanisms to try to make the important work that’s still being done by actually invested journalists more possible.

    But that all requires gaining enough political power even with existing media’s thumb on the scale. So we have to go around them. Direct contact, personal relationships, better organizing. Stronger activist work. Build network graphs around common values, mobilize them toward actionable objectives for change.

    Which right now means win elections. As many as we can.

  126. 126.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Eolirin: This blog has done a decent job of publicizing events and causes.  It has pushed call campaigns to pressure our elected representatives.  As noted, it’s raised a shitload of money.  It’s not too bad for a bunch of shut-ins and misanthropes.

  127. 127.

    sgrAstar

    @Ruckus: Ruckus, you’re one of the best writers on BJ. It’d be a privilege to hear more about life and culture in SoCal from your perspective. I’m a 6th generation Bay Area gal. Had to move, kicking and screaming, to LA after college. Fell in love with the whole crazy shebang. Had to move away, eventually- demands of work- but I still adore it. ?We love LA!?

  129. 129.

    James E Powell

    @Eolirin:

    The thing that really kills us with the national media is also the thing that makes it work; very large numbers of people are seeing the same content.

    This is why I want the NYT to die. This is why the Village must be destroyed.

    What must end is the idea that what the NYT publishes is THE NEWS and what they don’t publish doesn’t matter. This is how EMAILS!!! or Al Gore’s earth tones end up deciding an election. People who distribute information are filters because they cannot distribute all information. They not only decide what THE NEWS is their decisions are trivial and stupid and almost invariably from a Republican or rich & powerful person’s point of view.

    The dolts and dullards whose votes determine elections don’t decide what stories matter. They take their cues from their news sources who take their cues from the NYT.

  132. 132.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @VidaLoca: And your continued complaining comes off as, well, whiny.

    Wanna know how you come across?

    People are actually defending this asshole?

  133. 133.

    sgrAstar

    @Sab: Canadian? Have I rambled on about Poutine or the Raptors? I def hope not. Nope- Imma state-riotic Californian, currently in exile but hoping to return. Hope you’re bearing up under the onslaught.   :)

    ?

  136. 136.

    Ruckus

    @James E Powell:

    I still want the Village destroyed and the New York Times reduced to a local paper.

    Sounds fine to me.

    Although I’ve always considered the FTFNYT to be a single city paper, abet a big city, but even there they really only write for a small segment of the population.

  137. 137.

    Ruckus

    @Eolirin:

    You seem to be missing the entire point. Replacing the FTFNYT or the WaPo would not be the goal. It’s to get a point of view out there that isn’t bought and paid for by a wealthy bastards. The resources would be some time. Done reasonably that would be doable, because the actual cost would be minimal.

  138. 138.

    Ruckus

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    An idea has been put forth. And that is to use the resources of the blog to create something other than twitter with out the number of characters restriction that allows some controlled writing. A blog deluxe for want of a better term. There are websites that have tried to be a news front, TPM for example, but Josh wants to make a living at that and does OK. But you have to pay for the privilege of reading much more than the headlines. And professional news becomes what the FTFYT is, or a bit better the WaPo. This would not, in my mind be that at all. The content here is relatively short, to start conversations. This would likely do the same but in more depth.

  139. 139.

    Ruckus

    @sgrAstar:

    I’m only second generation CA. As best as I understand the story my grandmother was brought here as a one month old from Sicily, my grandfather was supposed to have been in the Sicilian mafia and too good at his job as an enforcer and was encouraged to leave and find another line of work. Brought his wife and daughter and as far as I can tell found another line of legitimate work. Other grand father moved here from Kansas City, MO with his wife and one yr old son in a horse drawn wagon in 1918. His background was Scotch/Irish, with a full blooded Blackfoot Indian bride in the mix some where along the way to him and I have no idea when all that took place. So I’m mutt like most of us. Born in LA, I’ve lived in CA, both south and north, I’ve lived in OH, stationed in Charleston, SC for 2 yrs, not sure I’d call that living……

  140. 140.

    artem1s

    @Kay:

    I’ve come around to thinking we should kiss their ass and maybe get the kind of coverage Republicans do

    get a grip.  they are playing Calvinball.  yes, Joe is doing just fine with access and the MSM and the FYNYT will continue to ignore him just like they did in 2016 and the entire Obama administration.

    Citizen’s United has got to go.

  141. 141.

    J R in WV

    OK, I want to apologize for jumping on VidaLoca last night. I was under the weather, irritated, and went off when I perceived that VidaLoca accused  B-J Jackals of  standing around doing nothing. While “doing nothing” was part of the lengthy comment, it was by no means an accusation, and my hasty reply was rightly put in its proper place.

    I’m sorry for what I said, and for the offense I gave to fellow jackals as well. I will try to be less hair-trigger and more thoughtful. My bad. I will also comment to a fresher thread up top, where people are more likely to see it.

  143. 143.

    Ruckus

    @J R in WV:

    Very nice.

    We are all in a, at best a funk, at worst a shitty place. The world as we knew it is changed, the world that we’d like to live in is, at this moment a mere figment. One of the checks on that world getting substantially worse has passed and her replacement may screw all of us for decades. The horrible people, with all the skills of a broken Soupy Sales record, are imbedding themselves deeper into our lives. We should be mad, we should also be resolute that we can fix this. But it will take time and there are a lot of obstacles/road blocks to be moved. We have those things though, the numbers, the reality, the logic, the history on our side. Money and the people it buys are not enough.

    IOW life is shit right now, most/all of us are on edge to say the least. Setbacks are going to happen, to all of us. Let’s move forward, we owe RGB that.

  144. 144.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    In the clear light of day, I’m sticking with “VidaLoca is an asshole”.

    I don’t have the energy to search for old posts, but this isn’t the first time she’s stomped in here to tell us all how stupid we are. If she brings that same attitude to community organizing, I’m guessing she’s not very successful.

    And I actually agree that people spend too much time here obsessing about the media, especially the NYT– if I never see “FTFNYT” again…. But this:

    And your continued complaining comes off as, well, whiny. They aren’t going to change. Ever. They’ll ignore your whining and your venting until hell freezes over so you have to do more than vent if you want anything to change.

    None of this would be easy, you might fail, but you’d be doing something. Which beats doing nothing.

    this is an asshole typing

  145. 145.

    ballerat

    @Kay: Four years is a long time to find one’s spine.

    Stanley found Livingstone in less than a year, and he had to deal with malaria and smallpox along the way.

    What we really learn here is who among the corrupt won’t stay bought.

Comments are closed.