Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

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

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

I like political parties that aren’t owned by foreign adversaries.

He wakes up lying, and he lies all day.

Jack be nimble, jack be quick, hurry up and indict this prick.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

GOP baffled that ‘we don’t care if you die’ is not a winning slogan.

Everything is totally normal and fine!!!

The republican speaker is a slippery little devil.

Prediction: the gop will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

Bad people in a position to do bad things will do bad things because they are bad people. End of story.

Bark louder, little dog.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

It’s a good piece. click on over. but then come back!!

This fight is for everything.

There are no moderate republicans – only extremists and cowards.

You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Thursday Morning Open Thread: Biden / Harris 2020!

Thursday Morning Open Thread: Biden / Harris 2020!

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160Comments

  2. 2.

    evap

    I’ve received two reminders by mail to vote, one with Biden/Harris and one with Obama. I don’t remember any previous campaign sending glossy reminders like this. I was thinking that at the very least, all of this money being spent has got to help the post office and the companies who make this stuff.

  5. 5.

    Baud

    Even if I were better off, I would vote for Biden for moral reasons.

    But I get that I’m not like the average voter who we need to turn out.

  6. 6.

    Baud

    @evap:

    I don’t remember any previous campaign sending glossy reminders like this.

    We learned our lesson in 2016 that our voters don’t necessarily self-motivate.

    Also, everyone know people don’t answer their phones anymore. Mailings are back in style.

  7. 7.

    Jeff Del Papa

    Census. Got a call from my enumerating friend. He will be back late tomorrow. The count got further than I expected. They arrived with 19% self reporting. When they turn off their gadgets tomorrow they will be at 92%. I have no idea if that is pretty good or pretty lame.

    They were scheduled for 10 days, thru the variety of court imposed cutoff’s they got 22. The Rez is consistently democratic, it’s clear they were left late to minimize the possible count.

    The problem with counting is just the size. It covers parts of 3 states, just over 27,000 square miles. Bigger than W. Virginia, getting close to S. Carolina, and much of it is only accessible by gravel tracks. (He did get one family that were on the north rim of the Grand Canyon).

    Oh well I am sure pogo will be happy to have her regular human attendant back, the current one just doesn’t understand her clear mews.

  8. 8.

    EveryDayIHaveTheBlues

    In Cincinnati (Hamilton county). Will try to take Ohio Mom’s advice and vote early mid-day.

    Cautiously optimistic. But as a village idiot once said, “I’m gonna put my foot on his neck and not take it off”

  10. 10.

    Spanky

    @OzarkHillbilly: I woke in the middle of the night and a moment later the clock chimed. It kept going and going all the way to 12.

     

    A long night. Got some sleep after 3, though.

  12. 12.

    Baud

    Bidenworld fires warning shot against Cabinet jockeying

     

    Members of Joe Biden’s transition team have been fuming at the recent flood of stories listing people in contention for top administration posts.

    Good.

  14. 14.

    David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch

    putting aside finance and morality, I’d vote self interest to prevent Dump’s incompetence and venality killing me. I think a lot of people, especially seniors, feel it that way.

  15. 15.

    JMG

    Son’s wedding postponed to next March at the earliest and probably not until next fall. Have no idea when I will be able to see my daughter who lives in France in person again. Yeah, my stock portfolio is up this year. That’s not much if any consolation. So no, I don’t feel I’m better off than I was four years ago.

  16. 16.

    Nelle

    Eight days in of Iowa early voting and 54% of my Dem registered neighbors (I’m a GOTV turf leader) have received their absentee ballots or have early voted. It helps me in knowing where to direct my persuasive powers. Also, on evening walks and chats (distanced), several neighbors tell me that they are registered Republicans but they can’t stand Trump and won’t be voting for him. I’m hoping there are more surprises in that category too.

  20. 20.

    Mary G

    Biden’s campaign manager tells us not to get complaisant:

    Now: Early voting is already underway in many states. Millions of voters have already cast their ballots. But there is still a long way to go in this campaign, and we think this race is far closer than folks on this website think. Like a lot closer. (4/?)— Jen O'Malley Dillon (@jomalleydillon) October 15, 2020

    Balls to the walls for 19 more days.

  21. 21.

    Anya

    That new Biden/Harris ad is ABSOLUTELY beautiful in every way. Amazing visuals & just the right amount of audio clip snippets to punctuate the awesome soundtrack. And what can I say about Nina Simone and her heavenly vocals.  It just makes the whole think come alive. It invokes hope, healing, inclusion  and all that great potential that we almost gave up on. Such a wonderful ad.

  22. 22.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Baud: It’s the time that was on my alarm clock when I turned off the alarm. Why is that “oddly specific?”

    ETA: to be more specific, my alarm was set for 4:30, I was turning it off so it wouldn’t go off.

  23. 23.

    Rileys Enabler

    @Josie: I voted yesterday in Fort Bend.  It was a peaceful 2.45 hour wait in line, but I was delighted to see they’d updated our old voting booths to new ones that used a card-reader, so they have digital records plus “paper” that you can verify before putting into the ballot box. My suburb is pretty white but the line was a glorious mix of all kinds of citizens waiting patiently. Let’s turn Texas blue!!

  25. 25.

    Mary G

    Some good news from Politico:

    HELENA, Mont. — The U.S. Postal Service agreed Wednesday to reverse changes that slowed mail service nationwide, settling a lawsuit filed by Montana Gov. Steve Bullock during a pandemic that is expected to force many more people to vote by mail.

    The lawsuit filed against Postmaster General Louis DeJoy and the U.S. Postal Service on Sept. 9 argued changes implemented in June harmed access to mail services in Montana, resulting in delayed delivery of medical prescriptions, payments, and job applications, and impeding the ability of Montana residents to vote by mail.

    The postal service agreed to reverse all changes, which included reduced retail hours, removal of collection boxes and mail sorting machines, closure or consolidation of mail processing facilities, restriction of late or extra trips for timely mail delivery, and banning or restricting overtime.

    Pretty obvious admission that DeJoy was trying to suppress the vote, not make things more efficient as he claimed.

  27. 27.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Baud: Nah, tho it is odd  how accurate my internal clock is, in that if I can’t fall back to sleep it is nearly always *an hour* after I first woke up that I give up.

    ** usually within 2 or 3 minutes before or after 60 mins

  30. 30.

    Baud

    NY Post printing more Hunter Biden emails. Let’s see how Maggie reacts.

    Unrelated (or not), the Today show apparently is shocked that white suburban women are into QAnon conspiracies.

    ETA: The Today show is a bit too kind  for my taste. I hope normies see this as crazy as I do.

  31. 31.

    raven

    @OzarkHillbilly: We got our new hybrid hvac so the old outside unit is out from under our screen porch. The boss lady wants an outside sink/potting bench made with a double stainless sink we have. The problem is plumbing but I’m seeing a number of them just using a bucket under the drain. I have some treated 3/4″ ply so I think I can make the top out it but I worry the damn thing will be too heavy with 4×4 legs.

  32. 32.

    TomatoQueen

    From my hospital room, carousing on hospital French Toast (not bad, prolly flash frozen) and hospital coffee (omg wtaf), I’ve been permitted to update my registration in the state’s voter database, on the very last day available, due to an extension by a nice judge who judged a nicety nicely. Maybe my absentee ballot will show up, at last at last. Then as a treat WaPo has given a little free publicity to the Biden campaign, by way of the Hamilton juggernaut, through the auspices of Act Blue. Give any amount, and TONIGHT ONLY there’s an online town hall, followed by a performance of the one and only, by the ORIGINAL CAST. I’m going to post the link here and hope people see it, and also in one of DougJ’s threads.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/theater_dance/hamilton-musical-biden-harris-benefit/2020/10/14/8cee6208-0e29-11eb-b1e8-16b59b92b36d_story.html?itid=hp_lifestyle-chain

    https://secure.actblue.com/donate/bvf2020_grfr_hamilton

  34. 34.

    Baud

    As former president Barack Obama prepares to hit the campaign trail to boost Joe Biden’s bid for the White House, he lashed out at President Trump on Wednesday. In an interview on the liberal “Pod Save America” podcast, Obama particularly blasted his successor for continuing to spread misinformation.

    “Trump is a symptom of [misinformation] and an accelerant to it,” Obama said. “When you look at insane conspiracy theories like QAnon seeping into the mainstream of the Republican Party, what that tells you is that there are no more guardrails within that media ecosystem.” (QAnon followers believe, baselessly, President Trump is battling a cabal of “deep state” saboteurs who worship Satan and traffic children for sex.)

  38. 38.

    Anya

    Is there an explainer of the Hunter Biden computer thing. What I’ve read so far tells me it’s a very sloppy fake which is a bit confusing. Is that all they’ve got at this late in the game? Kinda makes me a bit nervous about how this is all too easy. So far we have a strange (to put it mildly) computer repair guy, Rudy and some sketchy email that looks forged.

  40. 40.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @raven: I worry the damn thing will be too heavy with 4×4 legs.

    I’m not quite following, is it supposed to be moveable?

  43. 43.

    randy khan

    Considering that the Trump campaign is running an ad claiming that Fauci has said he’s doing a great job, the tween maligning him is kind of badly timed. But I guess there never was any chance for real coordination between the campaign and this candidate.

  46. 46.

    Gin & Tonic

    @OzarkHillbilly: Howling of coyotes woke the dog at 2:45, and I guess she wanted to alert us of the danger. Loudly and persistently. Luckily after an hour or so I fell back asleep. Of course both my wife and the dog were snoring soundly by about 2:49.

  48. 48.

    Lacuna Synechdoche

    @Anya:

    Is that all they’ve got at this late in the game? Kinda makes me a bit nervous about how this is all too easy.

    It’s not like Trump and his cohorts have ever been particularly – or even remotely – competent. His successes, such as they’ve been, have always been based not on his own cleverness, but on his meanness and lies – and the stupidity, cupidity, and gullibility of his victims.

  49. 49.

    SFAW

    @Baud:

    But I get that I’m not like the average voter who we need to turn out.

    Well, of course — who considers presidential candidates/contenders “average”?

  50. 50.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @raven: OK, in that case why a bucket? Why not just run some schedule 40 to one side or the other along the foundation?

  51. 51.

    p.a.

    CBS morning show (muted) in donut shop full Biden/computer for my 3 mins there.  No CC but chyrons looked like they might as well have been from Fox.

    SMH

  52. 52.

    A Ghost to Most

    The Russian assets at WaPo comments are absolutely certain the Hunter Biden story will turn the tide for the orange shit pile.

    I needed a good laugh.

  54. 54.

    SFAW

    @Gin & Tonic:

    Howling of coyotes woke the dog at 2:45, and I guess she wanted to alert us of the danger. Loudly and persistently.

    Did you go outside to make sure the cattle were OK, Tex?

  58. 58.

    raven

    @OzarkHillbilly: There is a door between the bench and the corner of the house but I guess I could dig it out. Do I need treated if it is going to be under the deck and on concrete?

  60. 60.

    clay

    @randy khan:

    Considering that the Trump campaign is running an ad claiming that Fauci has said he’s doing a great job, the tween maligning him is kind of badly timed.

    I’d say he’s more of a toddler than a tween.

  61. 61.

    raven

    @Immanentize: Did you see that book reference I posted? It’s a wonderful story based on the letters of the father. The best part is at the end when the tin can is in NYC for fleet week. Dad takes the son down to see the ship and the captain tells him to “take her out to sea”. The son never saw his father the same way after that!

  62. 62.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Jennifer@HiJCP
    Tommy Lee went so hard. McPence unseasoned boiled chicken and Joel Osteen working at Chik Fil A to pay the light bill took me straight out. I am howling in laughter. This is the energy I am here for.

  64. 64.

    donnah

    So tonight is the reimagined debates as town halls. Since Trump chickened out of the actual debate, Biden is going with his tonight, and Trump decided, as master of the TV universe, that he would pitch his version to NBC, who gobbled it up and gave him the time slot during Biden’s. Trump, according to insiders, said he knows he’ll crush Biden in the viewership numbers and he’s going to humiliate Biden publicly.

    People want to watch Trump as sort of a car wreck you can’t look away from, while Biden, as calm and reassuring as he is, doesn’t inspire that cult following. So I’m turning Biden on all of my devices and hoping he can keep the numbers up. I’ve already heard Trump’s Greatest hits.

  65. 65.

    tom

    Financially and career-wise, I am better off now than I was four years ago, but that’s in spite of Trump, not because of him, and I sure as hell am not voting for him or any republican.

  68. 68.

    RedDirtGirl

    I think I saw the link here. I gave to Chef André’s World Kitchen in memory of my dad. They are apparently providing food to the long lines of voters. I know my dad requested an absentee ballot in Spain, but I don’t know if he was able to submit it before he died.

  69. 69.

    glory b

    We need to do like others have said, treat it like we’re 10 points behind.

    I remember during the last election, Rachel Maddow said that the turn out for the Republican primary was A LOT bigger than for the Democratic one, and that lots of working class whites registered and voted for the first time because they wanted to vote for Trump. Now they are reporting that for this election cycle, new republican registrations are outpacing democratic ones by a significant margin, in PA hey have registered almost 3 times as many new voters as we have.

    Biden’s people are saying they think this election will be closer than the conventional wisdom. VOTE!!

  70. 70.

    raven

    @Immanentize:
    A MEASURELESS PERIL
    “Far more than a story of battle, A Measureless Peril is a riveting account of the quotidian life of a nation at war. Snow writes of the home-hankering effect of fresh-baked bread tasted aboard a ship far from home; of the affectionate, kidding, and deeply longing letters from men at sea and the women who wait for them; of the pain of seeing other men die and the peculiar pride of doing an unpalatable impossible job well. Richard Snow, the son, and Richard Snow, the father, are two of the most felicitous writers I have ever read. Snow senior’s letters to his wife — wry, insightful, moral, occasionally short-tempered, and most of all, loving — make the war as vivid as this morning’s news. Snow junior’s account of the longest battle of World War II is authoritative, fresh, and heart-stopping. His portrait of his father, whom he sees as emblematic of a generation, is luminous. This is a book about fathers and sons that women will love. It is also a book about the experience of war that no woman will be able to put down.”

  72. 72.

    Princess

    I voted! Dropped off our mail ballots at an early voting place in Chicago yesterday. It felt good. Long line of voters there pretty much all day, one of about 50 spots in the city. It was a very diverse group but I’d say a preponderance of older Black women. A lot of people vote early in our ward — I have waited 2 hours there sometimes.

  74. 74.

    Kay

    @Anya:

    I don’t know about how they got the emails (which is the fraud part of the story) but I read the Post story itself and there’s nothing in it. The emails are about Hunter Biden’s business dealings and the story relies almost completely on using words like “China” and phrases like “my family” as intrinsically damning or corrupt. It’s garbage, so they use the vague cloak and dagger story behind getting the emails (the part that is probably invented) to make the substance sound bigger than it is.

    So exactly like the stolen Clinton campaign emails. Because the emails are stolen they must be a “smoking gun”.  Same exact play.

  77. 77.

    Immanentize

    Four years ago?  I was happily married with a healthy son.

    My sincere hope is that on, say, November 4, 2016, it was actually I would died suddenly (but peacefully).  In the real world, Julie and the Immp still feel my loss, but are happily working and going to College in a Covid-free world.  And Hillary is President, cruising to her second term.  It’s just that I’m stuck here with all of you who are avatars in my pergatory.

  79. 79.

    Kay

    @Anya:

    The Post throws in info to make it all sound more credible- “the FBI” seized the computers. That’s the end of the sentence. No explanation for the FBI’s role, or how that connects to Rudy Guiliani’s releasing them. I don’t think there is a connection, but they want you to believe there is one. Invoking the FBI lends credibility to the idea that the emails are nefarious, although reading them, they’re not.

  80. 80.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @raven: No, tho I would probably use treated anyway if it was going to be exposed to the weather. 2×4 legs should offer sufficient support for the sink.

    (I use untreated all the time for outdoor construction, like for framing roofs where it is sheltered from the rain)

  82. 82.

    evodevo

    @raven: Yep.  Been there done that…rotted out in a couple years because wet…use treated and remember there is “treated above ground” and “treated in ground” categories…see labels on the ends of the lumber…besides, if it is a potting bench, it’s gonna get wet, even if not exposed to the elements…

  83. 83.

    different-church-lady

    @donnah: Considering that this point Trump’s greatest weakness is being Trump in front of people on TV, I really don’t think this is going to be the turnaround he’s counting on.

  84. 84.

    Kay

    @Anya:

    One way to look at it is this- you could accept the whole cloak and dagger story- the computer shop repair person, all of that, that part is a lie but just put knowing that that aside and read the emails. There’s nothing in them. Without the invented part it’s “Hunter Biden spent 100,000 entertaining business associates”.

  87. 87.

    Steeplejack

    @TomatoQueen:

    Good luck on your hospital stay. Hope you’re home soon! What are you in for, if it’s not too personal? Need to know whether to picture foot in tasteful cast or face mask and deathly pallor.

  90. 90.

    PPCLI

    @Baud: Even if this laptop were genuine, and not the obvious product of Russian disinformation that it appears to be, the accusation is bizarre. The email suggests that there was a meeting. Though it may just be that one was promised.

    That’s it? Donald Trump has a bunch of clubs where people pay hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to get the opportunity to chat him up and ask for favors. A couple of club members have been handed the keys to the VA system. Club members have been linked to foreign intelligence services. Trump’s entire presidency has been structured around a system for taking money from people in return for Trump’s attention and help.

    And we are supposed to be upset that Biden may have met someone?

  92. 92.

    Kay

    @Anya:

    And you can tell there’s nothing in them because the story is already about something else- now it’s about Twitter censoring stories about Hunter Biden’s stolen emails and if you talk about THAT you never have to get to the fact that there isn’t anything in the emails.

  93. 93.

    Baud

    @PPCLI: It doesn’t take much to trigger the “both sides” response.  A whisper of an innuendo against a Dem is often sufficient.

  94. 94.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    @Anya: Here’s an explanation from KOS that includes comments from the repair shop guy who claims he got the laptop

    ETA: Here’s an interesting bit from that KOS article:

    It might also be worth a quick look at the author of this Post article. The byline on the story is Emma-Jo Morris, who is listed on the masthead as Deputy Politics Editor at New York Post. Since when? Since today, that’s when. Morris has exactly three stories on her resume at the Post … all of them written on Wednesday. All of them about Hunter Biden. What did Morris do prior to her instant appointment as editor? She booked guests for Sean Hannity.

  96. 96.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Kay: For some reason or other, I think the real world FBI would be a little bit peeved at the real world publication of real world evidence of real world wrong doing.

  97. 97.

    PPCLI

    @Kay: That’s something else about the story that doesn’t make an ounce of sense. The FBI seized the laptop? Why? On what grounds? So far I’ve seen nothing that would even remotely justify such an action.

  99. 99.

    Josie

    We were fifth in line this morning at 7:00 (Harris County suburb) and finished the whole process in 20 minutes.  Easy peasy.  My son and I were strangely elated afterward and laughed all the way to the car.  Such a good feeling!

  100. 100.

    PPCLI

    @Baud: Ah. Good point. If it were part of an investigation of Bannon and Giuliani, then seizing the laptop would make sense.

  101. 101.

    Scout211

    https://www.abc10.com/article/news/politics/elections/california-republicans-reject-cease-and-desist-order-over-unofficial-ballot-drop-boxes/103-e1938c96-726f-48ac-a1b7-fa185f53af56

    The GOP in California is pretty much begging the state to take them to court over their “alternative” drop boxes.  They changed the wording on the boxes (eliminated the “official” wording) and moved them indoors.  They contend that they follow the letter of the law on “ballot harvesting” and want a court hearing on this.

    The California Republican Party is doubling-down.

    Leaders say they’ll continue setting up the drop boxes, despite state elections officials threatening prosecution if they aren’t removed by Thursday, as outlined in a cease and desist order issued on Monday.

    In a response letter to the Secretary of State on Wednesday, lawyers for the Republican party say a few of the boxes had been labeled as “official,” which they call an error that was fixed and won’t happen again. However, they argue the state’s vote by mail law does allow a third party to collect ballots and that their democratic counterparts are exercising that right through a practice they call “ballot harvesting.”

     

    Republican lawyers say the only difference is that their clients are locking them up in boxes before turning them in to officials within the required 72-hour window.

  103. 103.

    TomatoQueen

    @Steeplejack: It’s for my titaniumized backside (bilateral full hip joint replacements), and the rehab therapy required afterward.  Tasteful hospital gown, no casts, aluminum walker with pink racing stripes, and a less-than-wanted (how about never…) acquaintance with forms of oxy— and its inevitable companion Miralax, less than needed to know.  I have been away from home for a month, and all the boys are just fine. Go home Saturday.

  104. 104.

    sanjeevs

    From the FInancial Times on the latest in the fake news industry

    Until a teenager shot and killed two Black Lives Matter protesters in Wisconsin, a local news website largely pumped out automated articles on petrol prices and house construction.

    Then the Kenosha Reporter’s content changed. Stories highlighted the criminal records of the victims, while their alleged killer, Kyle Rittenhouse, was portrayed as a hero “protecting businesses” — a popular interpretation among rightwing groups.

    An article last week carried the headline: “See the names of the 269 Kenosha teachers who called in sick to shut down their public schools.” The anonymously written article then named the local teachers involved in an apparent protest against a return to classrooms during the Covid-19 pandemic.

    The Kenosha Reporter is one of hundreds of local news outlets that have proliferated in recent years, particularly in the run-up to the US presidential election. Despite presenting themselves as apolitical, many are what researchers have dubbed “pink slime”: outlets that push low-quality, partisan material through their own sites and social media pages.

    The phrase is thought to have been coined in 2012 by freelance journalist Ryan Smith, who found himself working at one such outlet and exposed the practice on US radio, comparing it to food producers clandestinely adding pink slime — a low-cost food additive — to beef.

    As media outlets are not legally required to disclose their ownership or donors, there are fears that some could be wielded to spread propaganda and misinformation around the November 3 election.

    “The issue in 2020 I think is not going to be foreign interference,” said Alex Stamos, director of the Stanford Internet Observatory and formerly head of cyber security at Facebook. “It’s much more likely that legitimate domestic actors possibly operating under their own name — with LLCs or corporations with very shady funding that are not required to disclose what that funding is — are going to dominate the online conversation about the outcome of the election.”

    Research from Columbia University found that between January and August, the number of local pink slime sites almost tripled from 450 to more than 1,200. Of those, some 960 — including the Kenosha Reporter — are part of a portfolio of sites operated by an umbrella group, Metric Media LLC, with conservative affiliations, according to Columbia’s Tow Center for Digital Journalism.

    With traditional local news decimated by the shift toward digital advertising dominated by Facebook and Google, the pink slime has filled a gap.

    Many of these sites purport to be independent, but are financed by “government officials, political candidates, PACs [political action committees] and political party operatives”, according to research by Harvard University’s Nieman Lab.

    They tend not to run advertising on their sites and do not require a subscription, suggesting they rely exclusively on funding from donors keen to influence public opinion rather than generate profits.

    “They raise money and they spend it to persuade people politically . . . spending so-called journalistic resources to get you to vote a certain way,” said Steven Brill, co-chief executive of NewsGuard, which ranks the quality of news sites. “It really is the total undermining of what anybody thinks journalism is.”

    While there is no way of knowing their collective audience, some use social media advertising and post promotion tools via Facebook or Twitter accounts and pages to boost their reach.

    A study by Nieman Lab published in July of about 400 sites it said were “partisan media masquerading as state and local reporting” found that the majority were established in swing states. The majority are rightwing; of the 429 sites in its study, Nieman Lab identified only eight as “liberal leaning”.

    Metric Media’s hundreds of outlets are aesthetically simple and almost identical, while its presence on social media is minimal. Indeed, more than 90 per cent of its articles are “algorithmically generated” using public data sets or rejigged versions of previous stories, according to the Tow Center research.

    But when there are notable events that can be cast in a way that might benefit a conservative agenda, human writers appear to step in.

    According to its local news websites, Metric Media LLC publishes “under a licensing agreement” with Metric Media Foundation, a non-profit group that casts itself as “non-partisan”. Both the general manager of Metric Media LLC, Bradley Cameron, and one of the board members of Metric Media Foundation, Victor Chen, work for the public affairs consultancy Situation Management Group — which lists Metric Media as “a division” of the company on its website.

    Mr Cameron, who in the 1990s served as a “senior adviser to the Republican strategy leader in the US House of Representatives” according to his biography, did not respond to a request for comment. The email account listed on the SMG website for Mr Chen does not exist, according to an automated response.

  106. 106.

    Jeffro

    @donnah: So tonight is the reimagined debates as town halls. Since Trump chickened out of the actual debate, Biden is going with his tonight, and Trump decided, as master of the TV universe, that he would pitch his version to NBC, who gobbled it up and gave him the time slot during Biden’s.

    trumpov-world is spinning this hard as “the CORRUPT debate commission canceled this debate, not Dear Leader!”

    Fooling no one but themselves, of course.  But hey, whatever makes Dear Leader think he’s setting the narrative (eyeroll)

  108. 108.

    Gin & Tonic

    If someone is pathologically interested in the “Hunter Biden” “emails,” this Twitter thread is a good jumping-off point.

    Hunter Biden’s “emails” were created 3 months before Rudy Giuliani was supposedly told of their existence, raising questions of who exactly created these files in the first place.
    — Justin Miller (@justinjm1) October 15, 2020

  109. 109.

    Jeffro

    @Baud: It doesn’t take much to trigger the “both sides” response. A whisper of an innuendo against a Dem is often sufficient.

    So true.  The media has been so conditioned over the years that whenever something drops about a Republican, they instinctively look around for something, anything, about a Democrat that they can compare it to.

    Working the refs…works.

  110. 110.

    Kay

    @PPCLI:

    To me there’s another important question. The stolen Clinton campaign emails were part of a campaign of a person running for public office. Hunter Biden is a private citizen and nothing in the emails indicated he acted as anything other than a private citizen and as far as I know he didn’t break any laws. So now anything stolen from anyone related to a candidate can also be stolen and then must be published “in the public interest”?

    Wow. That’s a lot of people and we’ll now be reading their emails under the “public interest” justification?

  111. 111.

    Betty Cracker

    @Kay: Do we know if the FBI confirmed they have laptops and are investigating this? Seems like some really big holes in the story, but admittedly, I haven’t read but an article or two about it.

  114. 114.

    different-church-lady

    Upon reflection, the idea that people are going to care what’s on Hunter Biden’s laptop more than they’re going to care that they can’t send their kids to school without the fear that they’ll die or bring home a virus that kills the rest of them is… just whack.

  115. 115.

    Anya

    @Baud: I find that question dumb af. Personally, I am not worse off financially or in any way but that shouldn’t be the question. Is the country worse off is the question not our own personal fortunes.

  116. 116.

    PPCLI

    @Kay: Especially because one of the things that has been trumpeted is a private video of Hunter Biden having sex.

    Let’s be absolutely clear about this: A laptop repair person illegally copied a video of a candidate’s son having sex, and illegally passed it on to the lawyer of an opposing candidate. And that lawyer made it public in a widely distributed newspaper owned by a close associate of the opposing candidate.

  117. 117.

    Gin & Tonic

    In other news, the president of Kyrgyzstan has resigned after days of protests about rigged parliamentary elections.

  118. 118.

    Zzyzx

    The thing that the right doesn’t get with their invent a scandal approach is that something like Butter Emails only works when there’s little else to cover. Then the media can focus on it constantly. When there’s actual news happening, it bumps it off the front page.

  119. 119.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @TomatoQueen: I have been away from home for a month,

    Damn, I’d be suicidal if I was stuck in a hospital/rehab for that long. Congrats on heading home soon.

  120. 120.

    TS (the original)

    @Kay:

    Wow. That’s a lot of people and we’ll now be reading their emails under the “public interest” justification?

    I think the trump family private emails would be in this category. Maybe the media could go and find them to publish.

  121. 121.

    Anya

    Thanks everyone for the links. It’s interesting.

    @Kay: Seems like the ‘serious’ media fell for it and if it wasn’t so badly faked we would’ve been treated to email 2.0.

    One of the things I get from reading some rightwing sites is that there is some concerted effort to have Hunter Biden relapse. Just think about how far you fall from human decency to make that your goal.

  123. 123.

    Ken

    @Anya: Is that all they’ve got at this late in the game?

    No, they’re also running with the Obama-Biden blood sacrifice of the Seal Team to hide that they didn’t kill bin Laden but only a body double.

  124. 124.

    Ken

    @SFAW: Did you go outside to make sure the cattle were OK, Tex?

    Careful, I just saw a movie about a guy who did that and was eaten by a giant tarantula.

  126. 126.

    different-church-lady

    A little “Biden +12 over Trump” at the WaPo is the tonic for what ails you this morning.

  127. 127.

    Ken

    @donnah: I’m still hoping the networks have conspired to merge their feeds and run a joint townhall debate.  It’s easier to mute the non-speaker when the two are in a different state.

    Er, I mean geographical state, I have no idea what state Trump will be in tonight.

  128. 128.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Baud:

    I humbly suggest that Ozark Hillbilly is apparently one of the few remaining people on this planet who knows that lay is the past tense of lie, and used it correctly to indicate what occurred on this one occasion, in the past — not as a regularly-occurring event.

    ETA: I note that I am responding to a comment made two hours and a hundred comments ago. I expect to learn that many others have made the same point.

  129. 129.

    Benw

    My town here on LI was just reported in the NYT as having a super-spreader event Sept 25. 37 cases. AFAIK no announcement in the community at the time the infections were discovered. Both the schools and my job are reporting cases and not tracing. FFS people

  131. 131.

    Betty Cracker

    It doesn’t look like the Beltway media learned much from 2016, but online Democrats did; they’re working the refs as hard as wingnuts ever did and with far more justification. Perhaps it’s done SOME good. It’s hard to tell, but the usual suspects are extra sensitive.

  133. 133.

    JPL

    I voted!   Arrived about forty five minutes before they opened, and it still took me forty minutes.

  134. 134.

    Steeplejack

    @Anya:

    Seems like the ‘serious’ media fell for it and if it wasn’t so badly faked we would’ve been treated to email 2.0.

    No, it got widely debunked within hours—even “limited” on Facebook and Twitter—and both the New York Post and one of the story’s amplifiers, good old Maggie Haberman, got dragged up and down the Internet. Most media people were alert to a possible repeat  of 2016.

  136. 136.

    Steeplejack

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    No, you’re the first, and the reason is that so few people use lie and lay correctly that it is quite easy to assume that when OzarkHillbilly wrote  “Others . . . I lay in bed until 2:21 and then gave up” he did mean “Other times I stayed in bed until 2:21 and then gave up.”

    Another argument that precision in language is not mere pedantry.

  137. 137.

    Spanky

    @Anya:

    One of the things I get from reading some rightwing sites is that there is some concerted effort to have Hunter Biden relapse. Just think about how far you fall from human decency to make that your goal.

    You mean like Trump being coached to interrupt and go off like he did at the debate specifically to get Joe to start stuttering? Unpossible, I’m sure.

  138. 138.

    Kay

    @Anya:

    Seems like the ‘serious’ media fell for it and if it wasn’t so badly faked we would’ve been treated to email 2.0.

    If they’re going to say the story is newsworthy, substantively, the story has to be in the emails
    It can’t be in the invented shit that led to the release of the emails. The whole justification for stealing emails is they’re just information so are therefore neutral- they say what they say. But NONE of these theft/leak stories are ever presented as neutral. They all start with the assumption that there is something damning in the communications.
    If it’s “in the public interest” whatever is “in the public interest” is contained within the communications. They can’t invent a whole nefarious narrative around the theft and release.
    Just because you steal emails doesn’t mean they’re evidence of anything.

  141. 141.

    Betty Cracker

    Hope the staffers will be okay. Unlike Trump and his sycophants, the Biden-Harris campaign is taking it seriously and following guidelines. JFC, what a messed up timeline we’re in…

  143. 143.

    The Moar You Know

    Did you see that book reference I posted? It’s a wonderful story based on the letters of the father. The best part is at the end when the tin can is in NYC for fleet week. Dad takes the son down to see the ship and the captain tells him to “take her out to sea”. The son never saw his father the same way after that!

    @raven:  I was five years old when my dad flew the first bunch of POWs back from Vietnam (Operation Homecoming).  First Clark, then here.  He was the flight leader, didn’t know that until a lot later.  I did know he was the first guy to land as I saw him through the windscreen.  All I knew was I was going to get to see my dad, and we showed up at Travis (we lived there) and there were THOUSANDS of people on the tarmac waiting and cheering and sobbing.

    That’ll lead to you re-evaluate the old man.

    Incidentally, if you check the Wiki article, there’s a famous pic of the walking guys cheering as they lift off out of Hanoi.  What’s behind the divider at the back of the photo was a lot grimmer.  But they lived.  That’s my dad’s plane.  It’s now at the museum at Wright Patterson.  I went there five years ago.  I walked a half mile through twenty degree weather with no jacket on (Southern California boy)  but by God I was going to touch that plane.  I will always be glad I did.  Was on my way to hypothermia by the time I got back inside but I did not give a fuck.  He’s still around, he actually just quit flight instruction just last year.

  146. 146.

    Ohio Mom

    Tomato Queen:

    Whew! Glad to hear it’s “just” new hips — you don’t want to know the places my morbid imagination went.

    Here’s hoping you are symmetrical (I hear that hip replacements can sometimes cause leg length discrepancies) and back home in fine fettle in quick order. Also happy to hear your folks at home managed nicely without you. That’s tremendous (do I remember correctly that you have an autist in your family?)

    I’ll add that it’s good to be periodically reminded that even with all that is in the news, everyday life with its happy milestones, small improvements, and every other category of forward movement continues apace.

  147. 147.

    TS (the original)

    @Betty Cracker:

     the Biden-Harris campaign is taking it seriously and following guidelines.

    Also telling their supporters, the media & anyone else exactly what is happening.

    I’m still wondering where Bill Barr is hiding since he went into quarantine. And did we hear from Chris Christie who was going to make a further statement this week?

  148. 148.

    The Moar You Know

     

    Great story, I assume it’s a 141? We flew commercial from Tan Son Nhat to Guam and then a 141 to Travis. I bet he knew my neighbor who flew KC 135’s out of Clark.

    @raven:  Yep, C-141.

    Dad was originally ELINT running those goddamn converted Connie deathtraps up and down the Ho Chi Minh trail.  That was a fucked up mess.  I’m amazed none of those guys died, some part of the plane would catch on fire every mission like clockwork.  Overloaded electrical bus.  He thankfully got out of that business pretty quickly and got the 141.  He was training for the C-5 -when he landed a job at PSA and got out of the service. I got to fly that simulator as a kid!  I’ve actually racked up a decent amount of sim time over the years, I shoulda kept a logbook.

    All those pilots knew each other.  Same in commercial.  Not a lot of people with that big jet skillset even today.  I’m sure he knew your neighbor

    The real “reappraise the old man” scenario for me was when I was 19 and got suckered into jumpseating an all-day sim session with him drilling two pilots for their upcoming check ride.  Kinda demoralizing.  I walked out of there knowing I was never going to be THAT competent at anything.  My brother got those genes, lol.

  150. 150.

    Geminid

    @raven: re potting table: the endgrain takes up water, so if you have paint or clear finish it’s good to hit your post bottoms several times. A small bevel on the bottom edges is also good.       Sounds like nice fun project.

  153. 153.

    SFAW

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    I humbly suggest that Ozark Hillbilly is apparently one of the few remaining people on this planet who knows that lay is the past tense of lie, and used it correctly to indicate what occurred on this one occasion, in the past — not as a regularly-occurring event.

    More than a few of us.

  154. 154.

    Peale

    @Kay: You know, its not fair, but I certainly would support throwing Hunter Biden in jail for 18 months for this “crime” if we can start arresting all the decedents of wealthy and politically connected people.

  157. 157.

    smedley the uncertain

    @TomatoQueen: Thanks for info.  But, attempted to donate but skip the tip and backstage stuff and Act Blue did not acknowledge the donation.  They don’t make it easy.

    May try again.  Thanks anyway

  158. 158.

    Just Chuck

    Ghost-tweeted.  No way did that orange turdsquirt come up with the word “prognostications”

  160. 160.

    TomatoQueen

    @Ohio Mom: Thanks so much to you and everyone. Being away for so long has had few complications, thanks to my son’s caregivers (he has CP, among other things to live with), who have run the show for me, including engineering and supervising our move to another apartment just before the first surgery on 9/14. The caregivers, Abi and Derick, are devoted to my son, and have the idea that we all ought to get a big ol’house in the country together (this is Virginia, so my doubts are as may be imagined, but not ruling it out), and meanwhile they live two minutes down the road and take care of us. With their efforts and my long effort to acquire enough annual leave hours to get this done, all has gone well, no disasters and only hiccups. Merlin thinks he’s in charge of everything, of course, so I am treated to emailed videos of him sprawling importantly in the new living room.

    The new hips do seem to be settling in well, & I will have a rant and a screech later on in the process by way of busting myths and miracles. The leg length question for me was how just how well the arthritis-caused discrepancy of about 1 inch could be corrected, as it was well established and started in one leg years before the other leg joined the party. I keep forgetting the not-minor distinction that this orth practice has of being the first in the country to do hip replacements at all, so there is a generation of experience to start with, plus several father-son pairs in the group, and while I do like everything to be modern and up to date and shiny, a bit of history goes a long way with me.  Bottom line today is that every day is a little better, and today also persuaded me that I can take care of myself on my own–self-reliance being at the core. And soon I can hug my son and cuddle Merlin.

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