… The more they show their — bias.
Not All Journalists! — Greg Sargent, for example, knows better:
The real problem here is this is a useless Q from a *journalistic* perspective. It won't inform people or hold Biden accountable in any meaningful way. Large parts of the story are invented/unconfirmed/highly dubious. What is learned by placing the work of denying them on Biden? https://t.co/4rvPuXrujz
— Greg Sargent (@ThePlumLineGS) October 17, 2020
You guys desperately want this to be 2016. https://t.co/uuk9rVbyTZ
— AdotSad (@AdotSad) October 17, 2020
In case you missed it last night:
CBS’ Bo Erickson demanded Joe Biden respond to disinformation and then tried to turn Biden brushing him off into a drama.
Erickson spent 2016 trying to achieve relevance by peddling misogynistic anti-Hillary crap, so this isn’t shocking. https://t.co/SF90HucAge
— The Hoarse Whisperer (@TheRealHoarse) October 17, 2020
One reason I love twitter is that these media courtiers can’t pretend to ignore it. They have to argue their positions! With mere uncredentialed normies, just as though all the networking & resume-polishing of which they are so proud meant nothing!
if any lesson has been learned by the left i hope it's that you just mercilessly work the refs and complain about every single article until they are ground into a submissive little nub. it worked for republicans. now we are going to do it. it probably sucks for you. don't care. https://t.co/yqi8b2wPcY
— the ribald sportsman (@CalmSporting) October 17, 2020
BIDEN: "It seems this journalist is amplifying dodgy Russian disinformation and that is bad."
TRUMP: "Arrest and kill all reporters."
MEDIA: "Both candidates attack the press."
— Mikel Jollett (@Mikel_Jollett) October 17, 2020
I see we’ve moved on from demanding joe biden make tactically terrible decisions by engaging the premise on court packing to demanding joe biden make tactically terrible decisions by engaging the premise on giuliani’s ratfucking https://t.co/ky5lZAF23S
— kilgore trout, kiss me mr. president (@KT_So_It_Goes) October 17, 2020
I’m not a fan of them so I can openly say this is a cartel of hacks whose only professional obligation is defending each other’s mediocrity. https://t.co/T1bB2G360Y
— Tentin Quarantino (@agraybee) October 17, 2020
Who bought you off to say this?
Hey, don’t pretend the press doesn’t also have power. So answer the question, whether or not you like it! https://t.co/cHBmp029Dj
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) October 17, 2020
There is a dramatic difference between
1) verifying, then reporting;
2) dumping, then demanding others disprove
The first practice is journalism. The second practice is partisanship — or perhaps profiteering.
— David French (@DavidAFrench) October 17, 2020
Part of it is bothsidesism & false symmetries as a lazy substitute for “neutrality.” Partly it’s lowering the bar for Trump as a hedge against accusations of bias. Partly it’s institutional deference to power. And partly it’s Trump’s own gaming of jounalism’s conventions.
— Julian Sanchez (@normative) October 17, 2020
debbie
Edward Murrow wouldn’t have stood for this bullshit.
raven
@debbie: My old man always called him Edward R Rumour!
Baud
The media will not stand to be criticized by a Democrat. In their eyes, we are beneath them.
Mary G
I tweeted at Erickson, and Paula Reid, who has been splendid with Twitler’s press conferences, multiple times bitching about this.
It’s the old “Republicans can be batshit crazy, and we’ll shrug it off, but Democrats must be civil and submissive at all times” blatant double standard. Very disappointed in her.
geg6
Fuck these assholes. After the journalistic malpractice of 2016, they deserve to be stomped into the ground and salt poured over what is left of them. So tired of how bad they are at their jobs.
Kent
Yes, these people suck.
On the plus side, if that’s as good as they have then it is pretty pathetic. They are in a flop sweat trying to replay 2016 when the country has moved on and now wants the pandemic to be fucking over above all else.
?BillinGlendaleCA
I voted last Saturday, I must have missed what Hunter Biden was running for.
Baud
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
He’s running for the position of email server.
Geminid
@Baud: Rightly and wrongly, most people have a low opinion of journalists as a class. So I don’t think anyone is going to get strung out about Joe Biden chewing out a reporter. Except other reporters.
Baud
@Geminid:
Agreed. But be prepared for a chorus of “he’s acting just like Trump” throughout the Biden presidency.
johnnybuck
@Geminid: Well it fires me up! They been doing this for 40 years. I’m all about the pushback.
MattF
Already mentioned below Ron Johnson’s slander on Fox about Hunter Biden, but didn’t note that the subject was brought up during an interview by the Fox ‘reporter’ Maria Bartiromo. She’s worse than Johnson— a hack whose only job these days is to spread poisonous rumors.
cain
@Mary G:
We are always expected to be reasonable, polite, and take whatever bad faith shit they throw at us. Fuck them. You should hold Biden to the fire, but do you damn jobs and look over that information instead of looking for a scalp through dumping. Do they really want to live in Trump’s America where he calls for hte death of reporters? Fucking privileged asses.
We’re playing for blood this time.
Baud
@johnnybuck:
Yes. And kudos to the twitter warriors taking it to these people. 2016 lesson learned.
cain
While we are at it, for godsakes let’s find someone who can write a facebook competitor.. ugh. The system is working to remove real journalists out and put in shitty places like Fox News in its stead. On purpose. This is so that FB can avoid govt regulation and fines.
johnnybuck
@Baud: I eagerly await the day Democrats interrogate these hacks about why all of their questions are framed in Republican talking points.
Another Scott
@MattF: Parts of legal twitter are having “fun” with Johnson’s comment.
(via Popehat)
Cheers,
Scott.
MattF
And here is a NYT article, starts out
And goes on from there.
mrmoshpotato
But what would the hacks at CNN have done in 2016 without airing hours of Dump’s empty podium – aired Hillary’s and Bernie’s speeches that were sometimes happening at the time they were showing an empty podium?
Another Scott
@cain: Wonkette has complained about this many times. I don’t know the solution, but Z and FB has too much power.
Grr…
Cheers,
Scott.
Tony Jay
The Infotainers are whining about how mean Joe Biden is for backhanding an ankle-worrying hack? Trump will stomp all over their bullshit trying to make this all about him. He knows the limelight is on a timer, sharing what’s left of it just isn’t something that drugged up soul-void is capable of.
piratedan
just continuously tedious isn’t it? The Ic sends out a notification that Rudy Giuliani is actively being played by Russian sources… and so, now with all earnestness, we’re supposed to believe this shit. We’ve watched over four years of the GOP relentlessly lying their asses off of EVERYTHING and here we are again, on the cusp of the election breathlessly watching the media give us THIS fabricated nothingburger and when Biden tells them its likely disinformation and following the same tactic that employed on the same threads of shit about HRC then they’re outraged that they didn’t get exactly what they wanted phrased how they wanted it, so that they can parse whatever the fuck that they need for the next round.
these fuckers aren’t much better than the police when it comes to maintaining any integrity in their ranks
Benw
Sane Americans: one of our major political parties has gone straight crazy town and are destroying our democracy!
media: u right the Democrats are savage AF!!
Geminid
@Baud: Yeah. But I think most people will judge Biden by results. My own opinion of journalists who play at political analysis is to paraphrase Harry Truman: I wouldn’t hire many of them to pound sand into a rathole. As to other people, I think there are a lot who can see through media filters. Most people here do, and we’re not that special.
MattF
@Another Scott: The one useful thing here is that people are getting to understand that ‘blaming the algorithm’ is ridiculous.
Delk
Did I miss something? Did all the problems in the country get solved while I wasn’t paying attention. Jeez, you actually get to do something none of us get to do. You get to ask Biden any question imaginable and this is the best shit you could come up with? Consider yourself lucky Joe didn’t serve you a knuckle sandwich. And then ask you if you’re still hungry.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@MattF:
And the difference between her and Ron Johnson is what exactly?
MattF
@?BillinGlendaleCA: No substantive difference in behavior, but Bartiromo’s job description is different from Johnson’s.
geg6
@MattF:
You mean Maria Bartiromo who called herself Money Honey? That job description?
Baud
@Geminid:
I think that’s true now. Like I said, lesson of 2016.
LongHairedWeirdo
There’s a vital piece missing from this: part of it is *access*. If you ask a reasonable, neutral question like “given that over 200,000 Americans have died from Covid-19, have you, or any of your Republican colleagues done anything to try to get President Trump to do more? If not, is there a threshold when you will feel you must step up for the American people you represent?” you’ll lose access. That Republican will no longer talk to you, nor will most others.
And since the Republicans have loyalist news sources that will always report on them, there’s no longer the threat that “if you want *anyone* to cover you, you can’t cut off access over a tough but fair question”.
The press is no longer as powerful, and the Republicans know it. *Then*, when you add in the loyalist press, who will always say bullshit like “the impeachment was partisan” rather than the truth (the impeachment was well founded and properly handled; the *defense* was partisan), you have the “flood the zone with BS so no one knows the truth” defense.
Note that I’m not disagreeing with anything else in the tweet – just adding something essential, that’s often overlooked.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@MattF: Um, not seeing a difference.
germy
geg6
@LongHairedWeirdo:
Yes, absolutely access is a huge part of it. It’s disgusting.
RSA
@MattF:
The one useful thing here is that people are getting to understand that ‘blaming the algorithm’ is ridiculous.
To paraphrase Ted Nelson, who coined the term “hypertext” in the 1960s: “They’re your algorithms, Facebook. You can fix them.”
Goku (Amerikan Baka)
@Baud:
This is beginning to scare me. The media seems determined to make this 2016 again. It’s Hillary’s emails all fucking over again! What if this causes Biden to lose PA or some other must win state? Just like in 2016? All it took for were some defections in a handful of states
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: Hmmm, didn’t see it on my ballot. Then again, I live in the People’s Republic of California.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@germy: I hope the church checks to make sure they’re real.
Baud
@Goku (Amerikan Baka):
If everything the NY Post printed is true, what is the worst either Hunter or Joe is accused of?
Calouste
Let’s make it clear what it’s about. These people are not professionals, they are courtiers.
Jeffro
@Mary G: Exactly right – no. more. double. standards.
Not in how Ds and Rs treat the media, or any of it.
Jeffro
@MattF: I was genuinely shocked to see her facilitate his lies like that. I know she’s been slipping deeper and deeper into hackery but whew, that was bad. Like, OANN bad.
Goku (Amerikan Baka)
@Baud:
What was the worst that Hillary could’ve been accused of? Bad email security practices? Nothing illegal, but of course that didn’t matter in the end. The Emailz! and the Comey letter probably cost her the election. It was the appearance of impropriety; of corruption.
I know the polling says it’s not as close as it was in 2016, but what if the polls are wrong again? The media can shape what people think
I fucking read an AP article in my local rag the other day that outright lied about Biden’s relationship to that corrupt Ukrainian prosecutor, except that it wasn’t mentioned that the prosecutor was corrupt. That he had refused to investigate Bursima and the international community wanted him gone. No, instead it was presented as Biden forcing the Ukrainians to shitcan him so he wouldn’t investigate his son. The article even quoted a Foreign Relations Council dinner where Biden bragged about it.
I know the truth of course, but how many other people do?
Jay
Kathleen
Here was my contribution on Twitter:
Trump: Media is the enemy. Lock them up.
Media: Trump masterful at engaging his base.
Media: But let’s ask Joe Biden about debunked scandal to keep it in the news cycle and undermine his campaign.
Biden: I’m not playing.
Media: How dare he normalize insulting a reporter.
Mary G
@Goku (Amerikan Baka): Biden has a penis. Lots of people used the emails as cover for not wanting to see lady parts in the chair behind the Resolute desk. Also, exposing a text to a struggling son that you love them is probably going to backfire with the millions of parents agonizing over their children struggling with addiction. Don’t stress, do a phone bank or something, or text.
Baud
@Goku (Amerikan Baka):
Hillary was accused of destroying evidence and playing fast and loose with national security.
johnnybuck
@Goku (Amerikan Baka): They probably helped cause her defeat, but apathy, over confidence and outright misogyny probably played a bigger role.
and George HW Bush was the last President that succeeded a two term incumbent from their own party. For whatever reason it’s extremely rare for parties to get a “third” term.
MattF
@Goku (Amerikan Baka): In fact, the awful thing that Hillary Clinton was accused of was being Hillary Clinton.
Jeffro
Maybe just cash him out and run FB as a public utility? Nah, he’d just start another one without any sense of responsibility whatsoever.
I think a combination of highly progressive taxation coupled with huge fines for corporate misbehavior plus …?
Quinerly
@Another Scott: unrelated.
I left a question/comment on previous dead thread.
Am I reading your post re Act Blue and over 7 billion correctly? Do you have a link? What’s the time period for the donations? I just started paying attention to the figures in last week or so. Thanks.
Baud
@MattF:
That too.
Chetan Murthy
@Baud: And yet, none of the emails she received were classified at the time. A few were *retroactively* classified. Oh, and the system she would have used if she hadn’t had a private server? Got hacked, all the data stolen. She did a better job of protecting national security by using her private server (which, btw, was vetted by the Secret Service, b/c also used by WJC) than the State Department did.
It was always bullshit.
Baud
@Chetan Murthy:
No argument here. But they don’t even have that this time, and it’s too late to develop a narrative.
Jay
Bluegirlfromwyo
@germy: Did it add up to more than his tax bill? Asking for a friend. No better argument for separating church and state than that.
Jay
Jay
Goku (Amerikan Baka)
@Mary G: @Baud: @johnnybuck: @MattF:
You’re all probably right. I just don’t have a sense of whether this is starting to gain traction at all. I know the editor of my local rag penned a mealy-mouthed response (titled “something something fair and balanced”), to several emails they received about the Hunter Biden emails bullshit; that if it’s true it could be “damaging to Biden and his campaign”. She went on to say that local reporters would not be covering but would run AP articles with further developments if any
ETA: it didn’t appear on the evening NBC newscast, so I guess that’s a good sign?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: Oh, it’s much worse than that Baud, she was accused of violating the Records Act!
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Quinerly: The $7 billion number is from 2004 to the present.
Baud
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
A hanging offence if there ever was one.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: Worse than shooting a guy of 5th Avenue.
Goku (Amerikan Baka)
@Baud:
The Republicans were working themselves up to accusing her of outright treason, if they hadn’t already at that point
Danielx
Very Serious People say it’s out there, therefore Very Serious Questions must be asked. Because reasons.
Fuck them.
Chetan Murthy
@Goku (Amerikan Baka): At least one Senator (or Rep) did accuse her of treason. Imbeciles, these fuckers. Moral imbeciles. They can’t be corrected. All we can do is run them out of public life for good. And into prisons.
Woodrow/asim
The tech behind Facebook’s interface and data model could be written within weeks by a competent team of coders.
It’s the infrastructure — the server farms, the sysadmins, and so forth, that cost a damn fortune. And would also make it not a great thing to bring into a public utility — utilities need to be stable services that are critical to people’s well-being, and Facebook is both too complex and too much in need of constant updating/tech innovations to do that well.
In fact, what we need far more than talking about making FB a public utility, is pouring billions into innovating and boosting the kind of small tech/Internet firms that right now have to depend on venture capital. A lot of why FB was able to drive out competitors was simply buying up those other tech companies, like Instagram, whose venture capital teams just wanted to cash out, thus selling their tech and user bases to FB (or Google, etc.)
If, instead, they could use gov’t funding to stay off the IPO->Cash out grind, it would help in allowing an FB alternative to actually gain some traction.
(We’d have other issues, like concerns that such funding/backing would just a massive CIA/NSA honeypot, yet that’s a different conversation!)
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Danielx: Personally, I’m waiting on the funny people; the serious people done fucked stuff up.
Quinerly
@?BillinGlendaleCA: thanks.
J R in WV
@MattF:
Yes, THIS!!! The precious algorithm was designed and built by highly trained Computer Scientists, and tested within an inch of their lives as it was built and implemented.
THE ALGORITHM DOES WHAT IT WAS DESIGNED AND BUILT TO DO~!!~ That’s how computer science works, design, build and test. Then using those testing results, you redesign, rebuild, test, iteratively, over and over.
Just One More Canuck
Avril Lavigne? When was the last time she was relevant to anything?
Geoduck
@Mary G: And not wanting that specific woman behind the desk. It’s important to remember just how much Hillary is personally loathed by vast sectors of the populous. (Not saying it’s fair or deserved, just it’s a fact..) Biden isn’t.
LongHairedWeirdo
@Baud: I believe it’s that Hunter may have introduced a person to his dad.
Note: getting people a grip-and-grin with the VP is precisely the sort of thing you’d expect a company would hire Hunter Biden for, and, other than the appearance of impropriety (since Joe was still VP), it’s perfectly reasonable and ethical. it’s just marketing.
So the worst the Bidens can be credibly accused of, based on the Post, is the ethical equivalent of scuffed shoes; it doesn’t look great, but it’s not something worthy of meaningful concern *now*.
@Baud: “Hillary was accused” is relatively close to a lie of omission. She had lawyers respond to a subpoena by having them send all relevant e-mails; that was proper, and *better* than her substituting her own judgment. The accusation was facially garbage.
Carelessness was invented by James Comey, and I continue to think there’s a *big* story here that’s missing. Comey has repeatedly said things that sound like “I couldn’t give the Republicans a can of worms to open by not doing or saying what I did, and said,” which to me *SCREAMS* “the Republican Party was corruptly trying to influence the FBI’s actions”.
And if so, it shows precisely why Trump expects his personal attorney general to be his Roy Cohn.
The Moar You Know
@Woodrow/asim: Facebook uses about 5-7% of the planet’s electricity. That’s not cheap.
Stuart Frasier
@The Moar You Know: Uh, what? Facebook used some 5 TWh last year. Total world generation is 26 PWh (in 2017). You are off by orders of magnitude.
Jay
Jay
Ken
@J R in WV: During the Volkswagen emissions scandal the company tried to make similar claims – that it was a mysterious bug that only activated the emissions control system when the car was being tested.
The near-universal response from the software design community was “No, no, don’t be modest. That was a difficult and complex bit of software. You should be proud of having developed that. Except for the criminal part, obviously.”
mrmoshpotato
OT – Lesdoggg!!!!!!!
Kent
@LongHairedWeirdo:
If there is another debate, you KNOW that Trump is going to be shouting about Hunter Biden. Because the next debate is supposed to be about foreign policy.
An absolutely boss move by Biden would be to turn to Trump and say:
“You know Donald, this election is really about the two of us and the future of the country. Whatta you say we agree right here and now, MAN TO MAN to keep our kids out of this. This election is about us, not them. I will keep all my people from attacking your kids, Ivanka, Don Jr. and Eric. And you get your folks to lay off my family. Can we do that? Right here and now? MAN TO MAN? Bring a little civility back to politics?”
What is Trump’s response to that going to be? He either agrees, or he looks like a massive fucking tool. And the entire conversation in the press will change to reporters asking Trump if he is going to lay off the Biden family. And why he didn’t agree to do that like Biden did?
Jay
Zinsky
This Hunter Biden laptop story is the biggest crock of shit these right-wing tools have tried to foist on the American public since perhaps the “Vince Foster was murdered” canard. It is obvious to anyone with an IQ over room temperature that this was a plant by Russian intelligence and conservative shit-for-brains like Ron Johnson suck it up like a dry mop. Yeah, right Hunter Biden just lollygags into a computer repair store he has never been in before, drops off his laptop and never bothers to come back to get it. Sure. As Malcolm Nance said, “this is the most pathetic piece of spycraft in history”. But it was enough to dupe these Republican doorknobs! Pathetic.
Jay
@Kent:
Trumpists and the Media won’t give a shit one way or another, “It’s just bothsides a Dump taking a Dump”.
the best response from Biden is variations on “fabricated Russian propaganda and ratfucking our elections”, plus “why are you carrying water for them, are you an agent of theirs, oe an asset, or just a useful idiot?”.
Another Scott
@Quinerly: Thanks to Billin for covering for me.
The number is from the ticker on their home page. https://secure.actblue.com/ (It updates a few seconds after the page loads. It’s only visible on the desktop (not mobile).)
Cheers,
Scott.
mrmoshpotato
@Zinsky: Horrible thing to say about doorknobs.
Kent
@Jay: I disagree. I think attacking Trump on his manhood is the way to go, and completely ignoring the Hunter Biden bullshit.
If/when asked by reporters answer something like: “Aren’t you ashamed of yourself repeating made-up Russian propaganda? This race is about Donald Trump and myself, not made-up smears about our kids. Aren’t you ashamed to be dredging up that garbage? Don’t you have an actual question for me?”
TS (the original)
@Geminid:
Most good opinions held were lost when they allowed trump to lock them up in a cage.
Quinerly
@Another Scott: thanks.
Can’t view on my mobile. Now I understand!
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Kent: I don’t think there will be another debate.
Jay
@Kent:
Dumph has no manhood, no honour, no empathy, no human values,
the closest he comes to having a “manhood”, according to Stormy, is a shrivelled up tiny mushroom.
his supporters and the media, are no different.
sdhays
I have to say that I’ve been slightly surprised at how pathetically the press responded to the sitting President calling for and cheering the deaths of their fellow “journalists”. Not shocked, because they are very pathetic and most of them aren’t really journalists rather than “useless media personalities”. But still, if they President of the United States makes it clear that he’s happy when people are violent towards the press and they don’t at least bitch about it for the rest of his life, then they really don’t deserve even a modicum of respect.
Jay
TS (the original)
@Kent:
He already looks like a massive fucking tool. He will reply by attacking all and any of the Biden family with every breath he takes.
Jay
When they tell you who they are, believe them,……
Jay
Kent
Oh, I agree. He is a fucking tool. But this isn’t about Trump.
There is a “MAN TO MAN’ honor sort of thing that plays very well with blue collar guys. I’m related to a ton of them. This isn’t about Trump. It’s about what plays to swing voters and the non-MAGA blue collar white guys who need excuses to come back home to Biden. They like that “man to man” stuff and talking about family honor.
It’s a macho way to take the high road and it creates a new Dem talking point to respond to the Hunter Biden bullshit that will make reporters look more like tools if they keep repeating it.
It gives Biden sort of a “please proceed” moment. Biden can shrug and give the “OK, you’re still going to be a complete dick, but I don’t have to sink to your level” look.
Jay
Jay
@Kent:
Ship sailed on that shit in 2017.
If they havn’t bought a clue by now, check their sleeves for the 88 tattoos.
PIGL
@Kent: It’s not that they suck it’s that they’se co-conspirators with the Republicans.
Matt McIrvin
@Goku (Amerikan Baka): The Hillary emails story was what Internet smarty-pants call a motte-and-bailey argument. The broad, obviously bullshit argument, the motte, was that Hillary was hiding something nefarious in the “missing emails”–that she had conspired with the Benghazi attackers, that she was the head of a pedophile ring, something like that. The bailey, the narrow but more defensible argument, was that she’d done something technically disallowed with email security practices. But nobody really cared about that! It was all about what terrible crimes Hillary might be hiding by destroying those missing emails. The newspapers couldn’t and didn’t say that, but that was why the story was interesting to people who would not have given a crap about email security practices.
When the Comey letter landed, the subtext was HERE IT COMES! We finally got it, all the crimes revealed, and in just a moment we’ll tell you what it was! Of course, the reveal that there was nothing there wasn’t until after the election.
With Biden, they can generate the clouds and shadows all they want but nobody believes that Biden is some Bond-movie supervillain in the first place, like so many did with Hillary Clinton. So the grounds for this getting traction aren’t there.
Ascap_scab
Chyron on MSNBC:
Major news outlets pull reporters from White House over Covid19 response.
Looks like Trump will get his FOX/OANN/Breitbart newsroom after all. Should be fun.
TS (the original)
@Kent:
Biden isn’t Obama & trump is sure not Romney. And the moderator would not come in & agree with Biden on this issue (which happened with Obama/Romney). The deplorables would expect trump to reply by attacking Biden’s family & he would oblige. Trying to make trump see reason, have empathy or protect his family – I don’t believe will work at all. It certainly hasn’t to date.
Jay
different-church-lady
@Matt McIrvin: I think part of what drove 2016 was the fact Comey was working for a Democratic administration. There was a kind of credibility to it due to the extremely vague idea that if even Democrats thought something hinky might be going on then there must be some there there.
Achrachno
@Jeffro:
She’s always been bad, hasn’t she? I remember seeing her years ago on one of those business shows and she was all about rooting for management and gave the impression of being entangled with business interests.
Jay
cain
@The Moar You Know:
My company recycles the FB servers. It kills me that we have them as a client – and I generally keep my mouth shut but when I say in public “social media needs to be better” it’s a good way for me to say “bitches, get that fuckin FB out of my face”
Ian
@MattF:
Well you expect that from Fox News. Those morons wouldn’t be doing their jobs if they didn’t lead questions and frame things for conservatives.
We expect a little more from the other journalistic organizations, or we used too, and we certainly ought to treat ‘reporters’ and ‘questions’ like this as they deserve.
Not related to anything you said, but the circling of the wagons here is really pissing me off. Telling a reporter he asked a loaded question and being dismissive to that reporter for it does not equal mocking a disabled reporter, calling for the arrest of reporters, or any of the other shit Trump does on a day ending in y. These reporters think they are entitled to respect, with is bizarre to me since in every other field of work respect is earned through hard work and the end product of what you do. Even if reporters think their breed is more inherently worthy than the regular plebes, this current batch has failed in it’s job so spectacularly that the only thing they deserve is mockery.
Ken
@Ascap_scab: Do they mean the national COVID response, or the internal White House response? Because they’ve pretty much ignored the failure of the national response for eight months, so I can’t help but suspect that they’re mostly bothered that they’re being crowded into the unsanitized WH briefing room with a maskless press secretary and a bunch of maskless flunkies.
Matt McIrvin
@Kent:
I gotta admit I can’t stand this kind of posturing, but Joe Biden is actually a master of it. Way better at it than Trump, who has a schoolyard bully’s notion of manhood as the ability to dominate weaker people.
Obama was limited in his ability to pull it by stereotype threat–he couldn’t show too much anger lest he awaken racist fears in the audience, and always had to be the coolest person in the room, to the extent that he got labeled a cold-blooded Mr. Spock sometimes. And, of course, for Hillary Clinton or any woman the danger is that you’ll immediately be tagged a shrill harpy. But a white guy has license.
sdhays
@Jay: Umm…so when did timber production become a big thing in Wisconsin?
He should warn Texas too. All those lumberjacks in West Texas are going to pissed!
sdhays
@Kent: FWIW, I think equating Hunter Biden, who had nothing to do with the Obama Administration and will have no position in the Biden Administration and isn’t even really part of the campaign, with the Dump spawn, who have desks in the Very White House and who facilitate using Dump’s office to enrich themselves and Dump himself, would be a colossal mistake. That’s why they make these kinds of attacks – it’s defense as offense.
Dump’s children are corrupt; so what? So are Biden’s. Both sides. It’s, at best, a wash. Biden should concede NOTHING.
Jay
Jay
Jay
Ascap_scab
@Ken: That was the way I understood it
Still looking for a confirmed source.
SFAW
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
This as well.
SFAW
@geg6:
What you think their jobs are (or perhaps should be), and what their jobs actually are, are probably two different things
Bill Arnold
@Zinsky:
The odd thing to me is that it is being pushed by two individuals with close to zero credibility to the media. I mean, Rudy was butt-dialing reporters, etc. And Stephen Bannon has been charged with fraud. These are the opposite of convincing messengers.
I’m willing to believe that H. Biden has done some unseemly stuff (he was a drug addict), and that some was recorded by interested parties (compromat gathering is a thing), and that the GRU (or whatever) hacked Burisma (or maybe a laptop hard drive cloned in an evil-maid attack in e.g. Ukraine) and has some real emails, all probably creatively edited because why the fuck not if you can’t admit provenance, and that a hard drive was crafted and given to Giuliani or whoever. (to be clear, probability given public information that it’s real is pretty low, but non-zero.)
But regardless of content, this is a blatant influence operation, probably planned for a long time, and yet so weirdly inept. And has very little to do with the actual candidate J. Biden, and yeah the Trump adult children are corrupt. (Perhaps not Tiffany.)
What gives?
Is this simply part of the Trump admin/campaign “Reign of Error”?
Are the people involved fishing for pardons?
What’s their next move?
Jay
BTW, did JFK Jr, replace Pence today on the Dumph ticket?
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Goku (Amerikan Baka): Chill out, if the story gets ant traction Trump will just act like an idiot to get the attention back to him.
Gvg
@Zinsky: I have trouble believing it was Russian because it is too stupid to believe. There is no point, no coherence, no crime….I think it was Guillini who has gone Gaga. The Russians have probably tried to get home to pass a better story and he decided he was smarter than them….or forgot half the story, I dunno.
Gvg
@Kent: Trump never keeps his word for 5 minutes. No one can make a deal with him because he never intends to keep it and isn’t smart enough to notice how much he causes his own problems. Trying to offer a deal like that just wouldn’t work. I don’t think Trump even knows how to understand a deal.
plus, what trumps kids have done I think is illegal and they need to pay too. Hunter just isn’t important.
the other crazies wouldn’t honor such a deal either, they’d still spew nutty poison.
i actually think it’s going pretty well. You know an advantage Joe has over Hillary? A lot of us watched 2016 and learned from it. We have been expecting this kind of shit and are defending it better.
Jay
@Gvg:
had a contractor a week ago or so, come in wearing a red truckers cap,
it said “made you look”
and “ Fuck, No”.
mad citizen
@Jay: That did not happen. I heard that instead Pence was replaced by Elvis Presley.
You know, it takes an army of the public to combat the nonstop BS disinformation of trump and that party.
It’s too bad the “journalists” can’t do it. The Journalism schools and majors might as well shut down. I can’t imagine how one cannot learn everything you need to to be a journalist in a one semester course. How do they make a major and/or grad school out of it? (sorry in advance in case any jackals are journalists–I haven’t noticed any in nearly 4 years here).
Jay
@mad citizen:
many of them, and their publishers, have just become whores, with out the work ethic or morality.
James E Powell
@Jay:
I really want them all to go far away forever.
Wolvesvalley
@Quinerly:
Here is a more recent reference point. At 9:00 p.m. on September 18, the day Ruth Bader Ginsberg died, ActBlue’s cumulative total since 2004 was $6,438,559,113. At 11:50 p.m. this evening, the cumulative total was $7,306,995,416. So ActBlue has raised $868,436,303 since Ginsberg’s death.
Chetan Murthy
@Wolvesvalley: I wrote checks for my donations (3% overhead is nontrivial); I wonder how much money got raised outside of ActBlue? I mean, what’s the total across all Dem candidates of allied groups? It’d be interesting to know that, and to compare with previous cycles.
dirge
@mad citizen: I can’t imagine how one cannot learn everything you need to to be a journalist in a one semester course.
I can very easily imagine four or more years worth of history, philosophy, rhetoric, sociology, statistics, and related topics that would provide very useful context for a journalistic career. Pretty obvious that current programs take a somewhat different approach, which could indeed be accomplished more efficiently with a twenty minute online course, nine shots of jagermeister, and a few compromising photographs.
Wolvesvalley
@Chetan Murthy: That’s a good question! I would like to know the answer, too.
KithKanan
@Quinerly: @Wolvesvalley: Here’s another reference point. The Internet Archive Wayback Machine copy from October 19, 2019 shows the total at $3,809,648,331 so they’ve raised just a hair shy of $3.5 billion in the past year alone.
joel hanes
@Jay:
I despise Ms. Barrett and all she stands for, but Max Kennerly should have done a better job on that set of tweets
The decision was not written by Barrett.
It was unanimous, and en banc.
The judges concurring were nominated by three different Presidents.
I conclude, with Mr. Bumble, that the law is a ass, but Barrett was not particularly responsible for this particular outrage.
Wolvesvalley
@KithKanan:
Excellent — thanks!