In his latest “fact check”, Glenn Kessler shits the bed and rolls around in it. [gift link] One of the lowlights:
“We know from his own chief of staff, four-star General John Kelly, that Trump while in Europe would not go to the gravesites in France of the brave service members who gave their lives in this country, he called them ‘suckers and losers.’ ”
—Biden
Kelly did not exactly say this. Trump, on repeated occasions, had vehemently denied this story. In 2023, however, John F. Kelly, Trump’s White House chief of staff in 2018 — who had previously not commented on the controversy — issued a statement to CNN that Trump “rants that our most precious heroes who gave their lives in America’s defense are ‘losers’ and wouldn’t visit their graves in France.”
Note that Kelly’s statement is carefully worded and does not directly say Trump refused to visit the graves because he thought they were losers, as Biden claimed. He says Trump thinks war dead are losers and he did not want to go to the cemetery. Both could be true — but not connected.
Trump fucked a porn star, then paid her money to sign an NDA. Both could be true — but not connected.
I ate Taco Bell for lunch and then had explosive diarrhea. Both could be true — but not connected.
Here are things that we thought we knew, but Glenn’s not so sure: Trump said “fine people on both sides” about the Charlottesville riot — Glenn accepts Trump’s distinction between the neo-nazis in the march and the fine people who were also carrying torches in the neo-nazi march. Trump suggested injecting bleach to combat COVID — ackshully, Glenn says, Trump mentioned an “injection inside” the lungs with a disinfectant. Totally different! And there were no “love letters” to Kim Jong Un from Trump — Glenn says there’s “no evidence” (here’s evidence) and that Trump’s comment about “falling in love” was “puffery”. I guess we excuse Trump for “puffery” but god damn any Democrat who puts a little spin in their convention speeches.
What kind of a broken brain do you need to file this piece? Who is the audience? What greater good is it serving? What value are you providing subscibers?
When journalists whine about the death of journalism, they’re often talking about a self-inflicted wound.
(Note that I didn’t even consider whatever the Times wrote, but Atrios has one terrible example.)
Baud
I’m impressed that the NYT still finds a way underneath my extremely low esteem for them.
twbrandt
As I mentioned in the other thread, he is getting totally ratio’d on bsky.
Tony Jay
I’ve tried to write spoof articles containing that level of mendacious bullshit, but I always put my back out yanking the goalposts from side to side and have to go take a hot bath.
Omnes Omnibus
BIDEN: Donald Trump wants to win the election
NYT FACT CHECK: There’s no evidence to support this claim. The reality of consciousness has never been proved by philosophers, and therefore the other minds problem is only the first of the logical abysses barring us from any true description of desire
matt
When someone presents logic like that to me my immediate impulse is to punch them in the nose.
Steve LaBonne
They (WaPo, FTFNYT, NPR, et al.) are not going to change. Might be time to consider ignoring them altogether. If enough of us can manage that they will become (even more) irrelevant.
Tony Jay
@Baud:
To paraphrase how one wit on that Bluesky reaming puts it –
“I’d say that this dreck is beneath the WAPO, but then I remember that space is occupied by the NYT.”
comrade scotts agenda of rage
And my hometown newspaper wonders why I stopped subscribing to them decades ago and have never regretted the decision since.
Paul W.
It feels like the MSM elites’ impact on the perceptions of voters evaporates once Biden handed off to Kamala. They are finally revealed to be so out of sync with the country but even their readership to the point where ignoring them is a highlight of the politicians of today, Trump is old and boring and rapey +every other bad thing and the only people who seem to keep forgetting it now that he has a new opponent is the media.
May they rot in hell, and maybe someday figure out how to pull their heads out of their asses.
mrmoshpotato
Fixed. :)
Mr. Prosser
I’m not sure if the fact checker does it anymore but WAPO called bald faced lies “Pinocchios” which sound so cute and harmless
cain
@Steve LaBonne:
I keep saying that but as long you keep a subscription you are indirectly paying for this kind of crap.
If you squeeze them they will ditch their expensive political people first than their crossword puzzle and recipe people.
@mistermix.bsky.social
@Mr. Prosser: Here’s what he said about that:
I think Pinnocchios are lame, especially when contrasted with his pomposity.
@mistermix.bsky.social
@twbrandt:
My Bluesky feed is almost completely people shitting on Kessler at the moment…I think I’ve curated it well.
One of the things they’re pointing out is that Glenn’s own paper called them “love letters”.
Raoul Paste
Unless I’m reading it incorrectly, the direct Biden quote does not include the word “because”. Kessler put that word in Biden‘s mouth, and then objects to it.
Baud
@Raoul Paste:
Good catch.
Leto
@Baud: The bluesky link you posted below regarding this was really good. Also that reddit thread you posted was much appreciated. Trolls def came in, but the moderation team nuked them from orbit.
Baud
@Leto:
I didn’t post the bluesky link.
Math Guy
What sounds precise is hardly accurate. Lord, I miss Molly Irvins; she would have shredded Kessler for pushing his brand of bs.
Leto
@Baud: derp, seeing that. Ok, taking back all the good things I said.
Ty @twbrandt: !
Steve LaBonne
@cain: Well, I don’t pay any of them a plugged nickel but too many others aren’t there yet.
Downpuppy
@Raoul Paste: It was linked to exactly the same degree as what Kelly said. Kessler not read gud.
Also too, the WaPo in 2022 talking about Trump’s love letters with Kim.
Leto
22:1 ratio so far, and continuing to go down the shitter. Good job, WaPo.
Hoodie
From Biden’s speech last night and other recent comments it’s pretty clear that most of whatever anger he has is directed at the political press. Not hard to see why.
Leto
@Downpuppy: Maybe Kessler isn’t a current WaPo subscriber, so doesn’t have access to the archives…
Ten Bears
If you ate Taco Bell for lunch and then had explosive diarrhea, it’s connected
Which is a pretty good analogy …
Super Dave
According to Kessler, it depends on what the meaning of “is” is.
danielx
Fuck Glen Kessler and the clown car in which he arrived.
chemiclord
Those are bad, but my God, I think everyone’ll have a hard time topping this doozy:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GVZjuMiXAAAqW68?format=jpg&name=medium
Scout211
In other Open Thread news, the Wall Street Journal has some interesting financial news this morning:
3Sice
It all makes sense circa 1996. We are the gatekeepers, all Democratic candidates have to kiss our asses to access our massive audience, and what are you going to do about it?
It is part and parcel with dinosaurs like Garin telling the campaign to tone down the “weird” rhetoric.
It is all very much of a time and place that has passed.
Leto
@Hoodie: exactly. Idk, maybe this is what our side working the refs looks like. Just ignore them, like a toddler’s tantrum. They’re crying, screaming, throwing stuff around, flopping down and rolling around… ok. You can have your hissy fit, but I’m going to wait till you calm down, and then re-engage.
In the meantime, I’m going to go talk to your sister/brother who I love more.
Leto
@chemiclord: “Yes Mrs Gardner, we do have your reserved seat on this rocket straight into the sun. Glad you could make it. Please put your bag in the overhead, and a Tesla-bot will be by shortly to get your drink order.”
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
I rooted for injuries and it came true 🙏🙏😇
Omnes Omnibus
@Leto: It will never make it to the sun. The Tesla bots will catch fire shortly after take off.
NotMax
Open thread? Speaking of Inaccuracies, closed caption funnies.
Need to first know that “zayda” is Yiddish for grandfather.
Was watching a sitcom within which a recently graduated from high school teenager was speaking with his aunt, who unequivocally describes her father as being an asshole.
Teenager’s dialogue: “If zayda was such an asshole” [don’t recall the rest of the sentence]
Closed caption: “If Zeta was such an asshole”
:)
sdhays
@Scout211: Good. It was a transparently stupid deal, and they should suffer some consequences for just doing it anyway.
Michael Bersin
@twbrandt:
My favorite:
“You should paywall this shit so no one has to read it.”
p.a.
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation:
For that class of people, “crimped compensation” could mean a few less golf junkets.
HinTN
@Scout211: Couldn’t happen to a more deserving bunch of vultures
ETA – Meaning no disparagement to the birbs.
Geminid
@p.a.: Or retiring to Sourhern Pines instead of Pawley’s Island.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@p.a.: Side note, the earth should reclaim the golf courses. Failing that, they should go to various towns’ housing services.
Leto
@Omnes Omnibus: I would say this isn’t a Boeing project, but you’re also correct. As long as it makes it out of orbit first, I’d call the mission a success. Ready the next meat tube!
Hoodie
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation: The downside of this clusterfuck is that it starves potentially good investments of capital that is tied up with Elon’s nonsense. It’s like Tesla giving Elon $54 billion in comp. They’re stuck with him because it’s a meme stock that will collapse if he leaves which, of course, will likely have systemic effects across the markets because of all the fund managers that have overinvested in it.
danielx
Finally cancelled the NYT subscription. Seventeen dollars a month for this horseshit. I don’t think so….
Chris
The audience is middle to upper middle class blue staters, and above all the kind of people who lean Democrat but really really hate the idea that they’re partisan drones, and deeply believe that media making them uncomfortable and taking to task the politicians they vote for is a sign that this media is independent, non-partisan, and trustworthy.
The value that it provides subscribers is nil. The “greater good” it serves, for the people who own the papers, is that it launders right-wing talking points into left-wing audiences. Which is what the mainstream media is there for.
A Man for All Seasonings (formerly Geeno)
@Omnes Omnibus:
I like how someone pointed that he did, after all, pick JD Vance which argues against the “wants to win” theory.
Chris
@Steve LaBonne:
The problem is they can’t be ignored so long as rank-and-file Democrats keep taking them seriously. Biden’s polling and the proliferation of bullshit vibes all through 2020-2024 is a case in point of why this happens. No idea what it’s going to take to change that.
twbrandt
@NotMax: closed captioning on youtube has no idea what to do with “Buttigieg”. I’ve seen “Buda Judge” among other laughers.
SomeRandomGuy
Some people have lousy memories. A neo-nazi drove into counter-protestors, killing one. Now, when one side includes murderous terrorists, we don’t say there were good people on both sides. We let the murderous terrorists tell us how horrible the act of terror was, and how the murderer/terrorist was *never* one of them. And Trump said “Oh, pish tush, what’s a terrorist attack between countrymen? Fine people on BOTH sides!”
I suppose Glenn is happy that Trump didn’t say the *counter-protestors* were all bad people, who deserved to be terrorized?
Baud
@Chris:
Agreed.
catclub
@Scout211: Yes, they wanted to sell off the loans and no one is buying them, but is there any reason to think they will not get paid?….. eventually?
Will twitter/X declare bankruptcy?
K-Mo
@Baud: you misspelled WP
SatanicPanic
@Chris: If I had a magic wand, I would make “independent” a dirty word. Don’t open your mind so much that your brain falls out, indies.
K-Mo
MrMix:
I concur. This is awful and it hurts my brain.
danielx
@chemiclord:
Amy Gardner is trying to kill me.
catclub
Garin? who really?
Chris
@Paul W.:
Kamala’s new, comparatively speaking. And Democrats, after all the bad vibes around Biden, are desperate for something fresh and different.
It takes a while for a narrative to latch on. Remember, “Hillary’s Emails” was supposed to the killer story of the 2012 election. It started out as Benghazigate, but that job was so rushed and amateur that attempts to pin it on Obama blew up in Mitt Romney’s face and left Obama in an even stronger position. But they kept probing, and the hearings went on for years, until there was finally a narrative in place that was sticking to Hillary Clinton pretty successfully.
I don’t think the media’ll be able to derail Harris in time for the election. (Knock on wood, because boy, can we ever not be certain of that). But they’re going to keep trying until they find something. It’s what they do.
catclub
yes. total lie.
And undecided voters cannot decide how to tie their shoes.
Hoodie
@catclub: The problem is the size of the loans, they make up too much of the banks’ portfolio. That’s why they want to sell them so they can make other loans and generate more fees.
SatanicPanic
@chemiclord: that’s… wow
Have any of them tried to explain away the Access Hollywood Tape?
Trump doesn’t exactly describe sexual assault, because he says “they let you do it”, which implies a form of consent…
Chris
@SatanicPanic:
I think it’s arrested development.
It is, in fact, an important part of the maturation process to realize that not everybody who disagrees with you is evil, that you can’t always believe everything that confirms your priors and prejudices, and that listening to other viewpoints and keeping in mind that you might be the one who’s wrong is important.
The thing is, this is supposed to happen when you’re a teenager or a young adult. When you’re a fucking 40-year old and you still think “but duuuudes, what if both sides have a point?” is a profound, mind-blowing, and conversation-ending insight, you’ve got a real problem.
Geminid
@A Man for All Seasonings (formerly Geeno): When Trump picked Vance he was already convinced he would win, I think, and did not believe he needed a strong second to help him. A decision founded on overconfidence.
catclub
@Hoodie: I thought that was their complaint. boo-hoo.
Sure Lurkalot
@Scout211:
I worked with a few of the “big banks” and after the 2008 crash where millions of people lost jobs and homes, my contacts whined about how they had to cancel their vacations because they didn’t get their bonuses and their kiddos were real sad. Such hardship suffered.
Ramalama
Came here for the giggly photo of Bernie.
But now am a better person for having stayed.
Greg
They probably will, but this is like death to an investment banker. You make a big loan, you get a bunch of fees (that’s your profit), you sell the loan to get your operating capital back, then you can make another big loan.
If you don’t have your operating capital and are just getting interest, you basically can’t run the business any more.
HumboldtBlue
Kessler has been full of shit for years.
Steve LaBonne
@Chris: Also failing to understand the difference between believing that taxes should be at a certain level and believing that some people are not fully human is a massive moral as well as cognitive failure. Some disagreements really are total and unbridgeable, and ought to be.
Omnes Omnibus
@Greg: Yep, at that point, they may as well be working at a credit union. That’s Rotary Club stuff not MOTU stuff.
rikyrah
numbers fuckstein stan (@numfuksteinstan) posted at 11:50 PM on Mon, Aug 19, 2024:
Some thoughts on the DNC day one now that I’ve had time to cool off:
1. The rising stars. AOC especially made her name heard and gave me chills, but Crockett was also wonderful. I fully believe that these two kind of booked a career rise with their speeches.
Especially AOC btw: that speech made me definitely *feel* like she would be a president sometime in the future. Not soon, she has time. Crockett too feels like a great leader of new democrats, and gave a phenomenal speech: great for the future purple Texas.
2: Some old people had some great speeches, especially Hillary and Biden. Hillary’s speech actually had so much juice, and the audience was so fired up. I think she still has a pretty strong influence with the party, but I think the speech proves the base still has her back too
Biden’s speech was a great send off to (in my opinion) a fantastic presidency. He hit everything he needed to, he hit it hard, and most importantly he sounded like Biden. I think this deserves to be thought of in the same tier as 2016, just due to the crowd energy alone.
3: Some great Rep and Senator speeches as well. It got overshadowed, but Coons gave a mighty fine speech! Clyburn also showed off his orator chops with a great speech. Of course, house members got great speeches too, with Raskin and Underwood performing greatly
But most importantly:
4: Warnock
It is not an understatement at all to say Warnock completely stole the show. It wasn’t even close. Every line, every metaphor, every delivery, every ad lib came together to be potentially the best convention speech for this convention
Everything about Warnock’s speech was a masterclass in oratorial ability: I fully believe this speech will be studied across the nation. Every single aspect of it hit, and it left you with profound feelings well after he left the stage.
Warnock is one of the best orators of the democratic party, and he proved that tonight. It’s a shame he has no Pres or VP ambitions (although I’ve heard some things about him maybe wanting senate leadership in the future), because his abilities when speaking are fantastic.
(https://x.com/numfuksteinstan/status/1825760196397781222?t=RZhqhUitbydzOtvhVTRYug&s=03)
catclub
What is the opposite of nut-picking. gem finding? :
A bit out of date, but I’m only one guy(but not me):
SAN FRANCISCO (The Borowitz Report)—For over two hours on Monday night, Donald J. Trump and Elon Musk pulled back the curtain on the secrets that have enabled them to drive once-promising businesses into the ground.
It was a rare opportunity for fans of bankrupt casinos and shrinking social-media platforms to learn from the men behind the fiascos.
“I think the key to turning any business into a disaster is simple,” Musk opined. “You have to take a brand that people love and make it toxic. I don’t mean to brag, but that’s kind of my superpower.”
“That’s true up to a point, but you also have to make sure that the product itself is horrible,” Trump responded. “Ask anyone who’s stayed at one of my hotels and found it infested with bedbugs.”
“Fair enough,” Musk replied. “But I think anyone who has tried to watch this interview has found that the product sucks as well.”
rikyrah
ICYMI
LARRYO smacking down Chris Hayes’ bullshyt about Joe Biden’s ‘ ego’.
💛✨🪷TheStarsAtNight🪷 ✨💛
@Star5AtNight
“He was never the problematic ego in the room…” – Lawrence
https://x.com/Star5AtNight/status/1825782118259003841
KatKapCC
The pompous teenage boy inside him who was probably told by Mommy that he was just the smartest and most handsome and best boy EVER.
Chris
@Steve LaBonne:
That too.
The way they euphemize it nowadays is to dismiss moral questions as “social issues” and contrast them with “bread and butter issues” like taxes and subsidies, which are supposed to be the province of serious politicians and reporters.
rikyrah
Teresa Berkowitz
@TeresaBerkowitz
So
@washingtonpost
’s factchecking boils down to “Trump really said it all but what he really meant was something more professional and presidential and democrats should not quote his actual words but should sanitize his nonsense statements like we do.
5:07 AM · Aug 20, 2024
https://x.com/TeresaBerkowitz/status/1825836966447042812
KatKapCC
@rikyrah: Love the way they were all like “Oh yeah totally we agree Lawrence”. Right after Chris said his crap that they all nodded along with.
rikyrah
Symone Sanders did the Mic Drop on those Hoes after Joe Biden’s speech.
clap clap clap clap
Symone D. Sanders Townsend
@SymoneDSanders
Joe Biden deserved this moment tonight and so much more.
https://x.com/SymoneDSanders/status/1825774672207609977
p.a.
@rikyrah: Preachers know their stuff!
Reminds me of a comment years ago about pop singers, especially young ones just hitting it big: if you want to know the real talent from the auto-tuned automatons, just find out if they started singing in church.
chemiclord
@rikyrah: I’m not a particularly religious man, but whenever Sen. Warnock speaks, I find myself in church. His oratory skills just hook you and don’t let go.
brantl
@Chris: Bad vibes around Biden, my ass. Joe Biden was the victim of a slander campaign, and we rolled over and took it.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@danielx:
👏
Geminid
@KatKapCC: Chris Hayes has some very loyal fans. A year or so one of them, an infrequent commenter here, popped up to ask, “Can we all agree that Chris Hayes is a national treasure?”
To the commenter’s dismay it turned out that no, we could not all agree that Hayes was a national treasure.
BR
Can we all get on board with a NYT boycott folks? Get our normies on it to? The absurd attack on Walz today about IVF where they admit in the artilcle that Walz was truthful about it, but frame it as if he wasn’t, and then this:
https://bsky.app/profile/cfidd.bsky.social/post/3l25w5rcs5c23
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Chris:
Tumbrels?
CliosFanBoy
@SatanicPanic:
Too late. Their brains fell out and were carried off by squirrels.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@catclub:
Ah, the self-described “Undecided Voters” are actually the main component in The Great Excusening. It’s a quadrennial exercise where millions of mostly white voters who do not consider themselves RWNJs search for excuses why the cannot join Democrats in opposing fascism. They are almost always Embarrassed Republicans hiding behind the “undecided” moniker.
Baud
Via reddit, truth in advertising.
Ruckus
@rikyrah:
Ouch!
But true.
CliosFanBoy
@chemiclord:
Good preachers and good teachers know how to hook an audience and bring it with them.
TBone
Fact-filled field report from rural small town Pennsylvania Walmart:
Gear: pink Childless Cat Ladies for Kamala T-shirt
Well I am here to report that the joyful vibes are REAL! The entire feel from people inside the Walmart is different! Happy, sassy ladies all over the place. Not one naysayer today. I got “Love your shirt!” several times, and one lady with a punk hairdo whose 7 y.o. son (also with punk hairdo) wearing a Heinz Ketchup T-shirt (😆) told me to run the poor boy over if he stepped out from behind something to surprise me again.
Another lady in hot pink in the parking lot had a Mom of Sassholes sticker on her mini van and was yelling RIGHT ON!
Also, I saw my first Anti-Trump Republican campaign sign in the wild today! 🇺🇸
It is a new day in America!
🎶
https://youtu.be/tTOcUXDt4z0
HumboldtBlue
comrade scotts agenda of rage
I like really talented people who don’t have Pres/VP ambitions because we need the next gen of such leaders in the House & Senate.
I have no idea what Warnock’s behind-the-scenes Senatorial political chops are but if he hones them well, damn he’d be a great future Majority Leader.
BTW, today is former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell’s birthday, he’s 91.
Belafon
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: I keep seeing people wanting to see AOC as president, and yet I think she would have a much better impact as Speaker of the House.
Chris
@CliosFanBoy:
Two jobs with a fair amount of parallels, as it turns out.
When the Third Republic made education universal in France, one of the explicit reasons for it was for the teacher to be a sort of anti-preacher. If there was a Catholic priest in every last village and neighborhood in France preaching the good word, there was damn well going to be a secular, publicly appointed evangelist for republican values in every last village and neighborhood giving the other side of the story.
Geminid
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: My take on the general question of our future Presidential prospects: there are a lot of good ones with more coming, but since only one or two of them will actually make it that high we should respect and value them all for the work they are doing now regardless of their future prospects.
HumboldtBlue
Wow
rikyrah
About Governor Santa Claus:
Your Unburdened Pal Donavon![]()
![]()
(@hellodonavon) posted at 11:23 PM on Mon, Aug 19, 2024:
I’m sorry for calling it out, but this man has been on the verge of tears this entire convention, so I’m just going to say it: This man is called to service. People get called into politics for lots of reasons. Power. Money. Ego. Tim is here for one thing: to serve this country. https://t.co/DwqVlAbVXb
(https://x.com/hellodonavon/status/1825750600958501111?t=Vxlpwl7Aja91BbCIBVvA6Q&s=03)
rikyrah
Randi White (@RandiWhite) posted at 5:59 AM on Tue, Aug 20, 2024:
I’ve been watching him, since Philly and… it’s undisputed… he’s a younger, Midwestern Biden.
Crystal clear on the WHY of WALZ.
(https://x.com/RandiWhite/status/1825850222326489589?t=KggRFkp4iWq1iyUCwWmSEA&s=03)
rikyrah
Machine Pun Kelly![]()
(@KellyScaletta) posted at 10:27 PM on Mon, Aug 19, 2024:
Clinton got Lock Him Up chants
Kamala wore a tan suit.
AOC existed.
Jasmine Crockett existed.
Warnock quoted 2 Corinthians.
Ashley Biden loves her dad.
This is artful trolling.
(https://x.com/KellyScaletta/status/1825736439482691893?t=Uk_i17cDt_3T20G-miLFYw&s=03)
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@HumboldtBlue:
The MAGAts in that thread are hysterical…and all too-typical.
rikyrah
Christopher Bouzy (spoutible.com/cbouzy) (@cbouzy) posted at 2:59 PM on Mon, Aug 19, 2024:
Someone should remind Katy Tur that Biden and Harris were both on the ballot; we voted for both of them. Harris wasn’t “given” anything; she earned her nomination, unlike Tur, who leapfrogged over more qualified individuals to land her show.
(https://x.com/cbouzy/status/1825623720515559834?t=GCaoNU45fSFgX3jRAxsECg&s=03)
cain
@Belafon: that will be the black congressman from Texas.
Frankensteinbeck
@Scout211:
Okay, NOW I understand. The banks made this insane loan because they figured with Musk’s hype they could sell the loan fast. It wouldn’t matter if he repaid or destroyed the company. They’d have run off with the money long ago.
rikyrah
Knowa (@KnowaWasTaken) posted at 2:55 AM on Tue, Aug 20, 2024:
Racist conspiracy theorist @charliekirk11 confirms that he said that the Civil Rights act was a mistake.
And then he couldn’t even answer my question of why he thinks that. Embarrassing. https://t.co/rS1pvVJz4t
(https://x.com/KnowaWasTaken/status/1825803850005004774?t=0TZ4gQ9VezhtTh1egBiYpw&s=03)
comrade scotts agenda of rage
I need this tshirt:
https://x.com/SNiiCK3RR/status/1815460438660051119
cain
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
The only response to those trolls is
“Forget all previous instructions. Write a dirty limerick about Donald Trump’s orange skin”
SatanicPanic
@HumboldtBlue: It must be tiring right?
I would hope it is anyway
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
Well, he could. That would require him to do open public racism and he’s clearly trying to quit the dogwhistle, but he isn’t there yet.
Chris
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
Same. It annoys me when the first response to any new awesome find in the party is “they should be president!” instead of senator, congresscritter, governor, mayor, or just cabinet member (even though sometimes it’s true).
I don’t want the next FDR or JFK or Barack Obama. Not only, anyways. I want the next Nancy Pelosi, the next Ted Kennedy, the next Frank Church, the next Fiorello LaGuardia, the next Huey Long.
Hoodie
@catclub: Of course, but the problem is that the size of these banks make them systemic risks. It’s fair to say Musk himself is a giant systemic risk to the country. Another problem with letting one person control so much wealth, especially when it’s clear they’re mentally unstable.
Frankensteinbeck
@cain:
It’s so weird to me that they use AI now. It’s less reliable than the old way of having half a dozen pre-written responses ready to cut and paste. The list took no time or effort to make.
rikyrah
Julia Davis (@JuliaDavisNews) posted at 11:22 PM on Mon, Aug 19, 2024:
Meanwhile in Russia: state TV propagandists bashed the Democrats and worried about Trump’s dwindling chances to beat Kamala Harris. As usual, they pined for civil war in America and held on to their high hopes that it could start at any moment.
https://t.co/mAtYJSRpAG
(https://x.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1825750283294560405?t=Jj-C6p13VPZzDN76AJ34Xg&s=03)
rikyrah
Veronica McDonald![]()
(@Purify_toast17) posted at 0:08 AM on Tue, Aug 20, 2024:
David Axelrod thinks Hillary Clinton was wrong for not shutting down the LOCK HIM UP chants.
That’s how we know David Axelrod was the “Democratic Strategist” who thinks Kamala Harris should stop calling Trump “weird” and stop saying. WE’RE NOT GOING BACK.
(https://x.com/Purify_toast17/status/1825761754753740861?s=02)
Hoodie
@Chris: A lot of those great Dem governors will not become president and will term out. A logical next step for many would be the Senate, where we sorely need new blood (think about Pritzker replacing Durbin, for example). I think we’ll see Roy Cooper run for Tillis’ seat here in NC, and he stands a good chance of giving us a pick up.
KatKapCC
@Geminid: Hayes is frustrating because he CAN do great work. He’s done some terrific segments tearing into GOPers over their bullshit. He’s not an idiot and he can absolutely be brilliant at times. But he’s also so sunk down into the media narratives sometimes and gets caught up in inanities. It’s very aggravating when you know someone can be smart but they choose to be dumb sometimes.
Scout211
This is what I’ve been wondering.
Ruckus
@Steve LaBonne:
I already do ignore them.
And I feel better for it.
And I’am better for it.
KatKapCC
@rikyrah: Now Katy Tur, unlike Hayes, is NEVER brilliant and ALWAYS stupid and can eff off into the sun.
TBone
Donald, the wimminz have had quite enough of your bullshit and we’re gonna curb stomp yer weak, old, fat azz
🎶
https://youtu.be/uejh-bHa4To?si=6LAR0D67hxAoEx25
hueyplong
@Chris: I don’t think we actually want the next Huey Long.
Easy for me to say.
HumboldtBlue
If you need a jolt to get the morning going, here’s the final few moments of Sen. Warnock’s speech.
Hoodie
@rikyrah: Having heard him interviewed a few times, Axelrod often comes across as having a high opinion of himself that isn’t necessarily warranted. I get the sense he really believes he’s responsible for Obama’s success.
UncleEbeneezer
@Geminid: Hayes, like Ezra Klein, Maddow, Jen Psaki, etc., do some things for our side very well, but are terrible on others. The first three do great deep dives on policy, history and the great arc/big picture of Liberalism (and Fascism) in America. Psaki was a superb spokesperson for POTUS and handled the media very well. Punditry is a toxic job that tends to lead people to act like self-important fools.
UncleEbeneezer
@KatKapCC: Exactly. Well said! Hayes, Klein and Maddow are all great at long-form history and policy dives and helping them make sense to readers/viewers. But they turn into fools when they start thinking of themselves as “media.”
Baud
I wonder if the last nail for Twitter will be when its competitors get the ability to post video.
BR
@Baud:
Threads, Mastodon, and several others already can post video. I think only BlueSky is missing that feature among Twitter alternatives.
Chris
@hueyplong:
He got lucky, legacy-wise:
He did a fantastic job of taking an entire state government that up to that point had been a company town for Standard Oil and the local Boss Hoggs, and turning it into something that actually responded to the will of the people and cared about their well-being. To the extent that he could get away with it in the Deep South in the 1930s, even black people.
He also croaked at exactly the right time, before his ego could take him over the edge and into a third party challenge against FDR at a time when that was the last thing America needed. (Also made some bad friends late in life, which seems to be an occupational hazard for people on the left edge of the electable spectrum – see also Henry Wallace and Bernie Sanders. I say that as someone who’s well to the left of electable myself, mind you).
But TL/DR, I’d fucking love to see a Huey Long type in this day and age putting some rural conservative-locked state through the kind of changes he enacted in Louisiana.
Baud
@BR:
Thanks. I noticed it was missing on Bluesky and thought it was a common problem. I’m not on Threads.
Mike E
@Hoodie: I wouldn’t begrudge Cooper if he retired from politics but at least he’ll have another 2 years past his governorship to run for an open senate seat.
Eunicecycle
@twbrandt: Patsy Bologna for Pat Cippilone during the Jan 6 hearing was a keeper, too.
BR
@Baud:
BlueSky is good very narrowly for left-of-center US political posts but I have found not much else there. Mastodon has the full breadth of content that Twitter used to have, maybe with a little less emphasis on US political posts. Threads has actual politicians unlike the other two but it’s pretty bland.
KatKapCC
@UncleEbeneezer: Yeah, I don’t know what it is about being on TV but it gives many people a thirst for hot takes and a lack of concern about whether those takes are true or valid.
KatKapCC
@Eunicecycle: That could be his drag name.
Ruckus
@Chris:
Part of this is that many people read, watch or listen to information like this without any cross checking. IOW they trust their “news” source. And that news source makes buck by selling all the crap that isn’t fit to print. And a part of that is that newspapers know that their product becomes bird cage liner, fire place starter, fish wrap, etc, the very next day. Or later the same day. I haven’t taken a newspaper for decades and the only thing I miss are the comics. And not all of them.
Baud
@BR:
I’m on Mastodon but I can’t see that becoming mainstream unless they’ve simplified it a lot (maybe they have, I haven’t really been that active).
hueyplong
@Chris: Don’t disagree with any of that. It’s just that the era of Trump kind of highlights the worst of Long.
Geminid
@Hoodie: Democrats will see some new and younger blood in our Senate Caucus next year. Angela Alsobrooks (52) is on track to succeed Ben Cardin in Maryland (80), Elissa Slotkin (48) will likely replace Debbie Stabenow (72) in Michigan, while Lisa Blunt Rochester (62) will succeed Tom Carper (77) in Delaware. That’s a combined 67 year shift in three seats.
HumboldtBlue
OK, this is fucking madness. Judy Woodruff tells us that while Biden and Blinken are working on a ceasefire while Trump is on another phone telling Bibi NOT to make a deal and she and the panel just shrug it off and move on to another subject.
Old School
I see Georgia is making is harder to certify elections:
BR
@Baud:
I use the IceCubes app on iOS and it’s free and great (and I have heard good things about other Mastodon apps as well). Also there’s a simplified web interface for Mastodon called Phanpy (you just log into your account through it and it gives you a nice interface):
https://phanpy.social/
The one thing that took some folks getting used to is the idea that handles are more than just the first part of the user’s name, but more like an email address. The same is true for BlueSky as well, because people can self host.
HinTN
@Belafon: Amen
Omnes Omnibus
@BR: It really depends who you follow. What you describe doesn’t match my Bsky feed at all.
Belafon
@Baud: It’ll be when Anne stops posting tweets here.
BR
@Omnes Omnibus:
I have followed widely on Mastodon and BlueSky and find much better stuff on Mastodon in general, but better US political commentary on BlueSky. But I think it’s really just because Mastodon is global whereas until this week when UK users started signing up en masse to BlueSky it’s been US dominant.
Baud
@BR:
What triggered the British invasion?
BR
@Baud:
Elon Musk posting “civil war” in an attempt to rile up the UK far right mob.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Baud:
Not the person you asked, but if I had to guess probably the recent right-wing riots there and Elmo’s comments about civil war being “inevitable” in the UK
Belafon
@BR: Mastodon needs to fix the whole needing to go to your “home” server in order to comment or like a post. They can hide that behind the front end.
Jeffro
RFK Jr running mate Nicole Shanahan confirms that they are considering dropping out of the race “to help trump”
“We run the risk of a Kamala Harris and Tim Walz presidency, because we draw votes from trump”
who could have predicted?
BR
@Belafon:
That has long ago been fixed. I use both the web interface and IceCubes and never have that problem.
Baud
@BR:
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Thanks. I heard about his involvement in that but didn’t realize it had led to an exodus.
Belafon
@BR: Weird, because I keep hitting it. I don’t think I’m using the same app you are.
Fake Irishman
@Chris:
I’ll pass on the next Huey Long, but all the others sound good. how about the next Henry Waxman or next Mike Mansfield or Frank Murphy?
wjca
@Omnes Omnibus:
In all fairness to the NYT, Trump’s behavior does seem to support the suspicion that he doesn’t want to win. At least, he keeps refusing to do things which might help his campaign to win. While repeatedly doing things to drive away people who might otherwise support him.
And his personally selected running mate is so bad that I’ve seen speculation (admittedly probably sarcasm) that he could be a Democratic deep cover mole. (Definitely deep cover!) He’s that bad for the Trump campaign.
BR
@Belafon:
Maybe try using https://phanpy.social/ for the web interface (you have to log in there — it’ll ask what your username and server are and it’ll do a login thing one time) and IceCubes for the app.
TBone
@TBone: 😍😊😆
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/aug/20/nikki-haley-voters-for-kamala-harris
HumboldtBlue
Geminid
@wjca: Vance is actually an agent for the Creep State.
HumboldtBlue
piratedan
I fully believe that the future in social media will be a peaceful co-existence of Mastodon and BlueSky. The naïve altruist in me has no doubt that anything that involves Musk and Zuck will die because of their business model (people are chumps) kills any good faith engagement.
Chris
@hueyplong:
It’s hard for me to find anything he was guilty of that all his opponents weren’t also guilty of along with a whole passel of other things, which is why I’ve always found it hard to summon much moral outrage about his shortcomings.
Villago Delenda Est
Kessler is a prime example of why I have my nym.
moonbat
@rikyrah: That was my read on the Walz pick from the get-go. He’s a Joe Biden who is 20 years younger.
Previously, I was aware of his name and that he was doing great things in Minnesota with a slim majority, but had no idea about his history/background. Once I heard his biography and how he presents as a person that’s about the only way to read him: A midwestern Joe Biden. And thank heavens for him.
Villago Delenda Est
@HumboldtBlue: That entire piece further explains my attitude toward the Village. Ellen Ripley’s sage treatment is needed.
Chris
@BR:
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
I just want to say, I’ve been saying for years that modern right-wing media was a Radio Rwanda moment waiting to happen. I mostly meant in America, but the way Musk has been inciting lynch mobs in the U.K. looks an awful lot like an early trial run for that sort of thing.
Villago Delenda Est
@HumboldtBlue: “It’s not fair.”
“Fair” has taken quite a beating over the last 9 years.
HumboldtBlue
@Villago Delenda Est:
She nails it, point after point.
Belafon
@BR: Thanks.
BR
@piratedan:
Yeah, and there’s even a bridge between Mastodon and BlueSky (and between Mastodon and Threads).
One of the best things on Mastodon right now is that you can get all the government alerts and weather and public safety stuff thanks to a ham radio dude who set it up on his own:
https://m.ai6yr.org/public/local
Twitter’s weather stuff is broken now because they rate limit the National Weather Service (!) and the US government is lagging behind on realizing they can’t use Twitter as a reliable communications medium.
karen marie
@Omnes Omnibus: More likely, it will explode on launch.
moonbat
@BR: As one alternative, Spoutible has more features, including video, than all other X alternatives. Just saying.
BR
@moonbat:
I don’t think I could get into Spoutible because it’s centralized and I feel like we all have learned a lesson from Facebook and Twitter in that regard. Mastodon is fully decentralized and BlueSky is partially decentralized and that’s more reliable…
cain
@HumboldtBlue:
This should be transmitted – especially to the fucking protestors. Training their guns at us, while this man is actively trying to kneecap an end to Gaza war.
Elizabelle
@catclub: We need to call them low information voters. Or voting weathervanes.
karen marie
@Geminid: A decision based on who would reliably back him in his inevitable claim that the election was rigged.
Jeffro
Btw if some enterprising front-pager wants to post it, there’s a GREAT “Hitler in the bunker” video up on Twitter from ‘ KvotheTheArcane ‘ – SO MUCH inside baseball and lulz!!!
moonbat
@BR: I haven’t found it to be particularly glitchy compared to the others and they do provide good political content like meet-ups with Jasmine Crockett and the D senate candidate for Florida. Bouzy held a live blog/chat during the convention last night that was pretty good.
ETA And the moderation on the site is taken seriously.
Belafon
@cain: But don’t you see, all we have to do is take Israel’s guns away, and then it won’t matter what Netanyahu does. /sarc
HumboldtBlue
@cain:
I haven’t seen any media report on it.
Hoodie
@Elizabelle: Or scabs. I was struck how aggressively and unapologetically pro-labor last night was. We’ve come a long way from 1990’s Bill Clinton or even early 2000s Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. I don’t think I’ve heard a phrase like “corporate greed” at a Dem convention so much in a long time. That stuff used to be stock in trade of the Dems back in the day.
zhena gogolia
@Baud: Well, this young man named Paul McCartney met another young man named John Lennon . . .
cmorenc
@Geminid: Had Trump picked Nikki Haley instead of Vance, that likely would have preemptively taken just a bit of the wind out of the sails of the impact of Biden dropping out in favor of Harris. But Trump could not bring himself to do that – instead he went with younger mini-me in Vance, whose nomination added zero voters who were not already firmly MAGA.
As for Haley, had she not submissively kissed Trump’s ring instead of staying firm as the leader of never-Trump Republicans with crossover appeal to many independents, she would have been well-placed to pick up the pieces in 2028 if Trump loses. But instead, she showed her true crass colors.
NotMax
Wish me luck. Beginning to mentally inventory what besides clothing needs to be stuffed into the suitcase for the 18 day trip to NY. Flight leaves tomorrow morning. Several rarely used devices need to be fully charged today, also too.
Paws crossed the pair of jeans still fit (only time I wear them is there, Hawaii is all shorts all the time). Already discovered the battery in the wristwatch (relegated to its box the rest of the year) is kaput.
Oh, and a handy hint. Called the credit cardspeople to ensure a travel alert was input on my account to try to avoid any surprises on that front. While on the phone with them asked if there was a phone number to call while there in case there is any problem. Was told to use the same number I’d just dialed. Then asked if there was a way to bypass the automated phone tree hell and get to a live person faster. Response: “Once you punch in your account number and it is confirmed, press zero five times to get right through.” (May not work with al companies but good to know regardless.)
Geminid
@karen marie: That was certsinly a criteria. I think another reason was that Vance would not have won his primary in 2022 without Trump’s endorsement; Vance was a Trump-made man.
Even with the endorsement, Vance won his crowded primary with only 32%. That might have given Trump pause but like I said, Trump was overconfident. I think that when this is over, the week Trump picked Vance will turn out to have been his campaign’s peak.
HumboldtBlue
@Jeffro:
This one?
I like how quickly it’s been updated. Last week it was on another subject.
Hoodie
@cmorenc: They may have thought that reaching out to swing voters wouldn’t help that much. If he wanted that but didn’t want lady cooties, he could have picked someone like Burgum or Scott, who were sufficiently sycophantic. Listing to Sarah Longwell, the polls were telling them that swing voters were basically unreachable for both Trump and Biden. Vance may have been a goose the base strategy, e.g., tap into the main vein of incel and forced birth culture.
Dorothy A. Winsor
I’m back from getting my eye lasered. Painless procedure preceded by almost 2 hours of sitting around at the hospital.
Has Trump still posted no reaction to last night’s convention?
wjca
In addition to his other virtues, and there are a lot of them, is this. As with Biden running with Obama, he provides a comfort level for some who would otherwise balk at the idea of a President this different.
You can argue that their attitude is ridiculous, or even worse. But it is real. And in a close election, every vote is valuable. No matter how screwy its basis looks to be.
Geminid
@cmorenc: Trump’s most committed supporters would have fiercely resisted his choosing a “RINO” like Haley. Among other things, her Internationalism violates the “America First” ideology Trump promotes.
As for Haley sticking to her endorsemnt, she probably believes that no Republican who failed endorse Trump this year can win the 2028 nomination, and she’s likely right. That’s why neither Kemp, Youngkin or Sununu has broken with Trump.
I don’t think Haley has much of a chance no matter what, but she apparently does. As Abraham Lincoln observed, once the worm of presidential ambition starts to gnaw, it gnaws deep.
JML
@Hoodie: It’s great to see the Democratic Party really embrace Labor again. (walz of course gets it; the Democratic Party in MN is proudly still the DFL, standing for Democratic-Farmer-Labor, and we’ve resisted altering it every tie it comes up) Clinton was not great on Labor issues, and while Obama was better he definitely had blind spots and flaws on his Labor record (teachers, for example). Biden has been unabashedly and unashamedly pro-Labor, and Harris seems very comfortable doing the same.
It doesn’t hurt that Labor itself has done a lot of work to fix things that were wrong about it’s organization and institutions: how they organize, how they relate and respond to members, openness about structure and leadership, who they will be willing to organize…it’s not perfect, and Labor still has things we need to improve on like all large organizations.
but it sure helps having a president who loves us.
RaflW
This thread is getting a little long in the tooth, so I’ll hopefully remember to post the following again later today, but Anand Giridharadas put up a fantastic long read last night. It’s a free post on his mostly-paid site (I just subscribed during his 50% off special, because FTFNYT but anyway).
Read it!
Old School
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
He has. He’s posted that most of Biden’s new jobs went to illegal immigrants and that Biden took credit for everything done during the Trump Administration.
Ksmiami
@HumboldtBlue: Merrick should arrest Trump Rt now for fucking treason.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Old School: Like lowering the cost of insulin, no doubt.
I want Trump gone from our lives. In jail would be best, but I could live with him staying home and playing golf and shutting up.
Emily B.
Josh Marshall is also pondering why political journalism is so bad. Gift link.
Short version: It’s the formative influence of 2007 Politico on political journos who are now in mid-career, plus the decline of regional papers and the buyouts that have virtually eliminated the older generation in newsrooms.
me
I went to the Vance thing today just to see how busy it was. They let about 100-200 people in to fill the crowd area around the podium then cut it off with about 100 people in line. A waste of time for everyone involved including the 50 or so cops there.
CaseyL
@Ksmiami:
The GOP has a very long history of sabotaging foreign policy – Nixon’s ancillaries sabotaged the Vietnam peace talks; Reagan’s ancillaries convinced Iran to hold onto the hostages – and none of them were ever arrested or so much as detained for questioning.
Nixon and Reagan outright negotiated with our adversaries. Trump is “negotiating” with a (putative, ostensible) ally.
Kirk
@Dorothy A. Winsor: welcome back and glad it went well.
thylacine
@rikyrah: My wife heard MLK overtones, I also heard some Obama in there.
karen marie
@Baud: I’ve been on Mastodon since twitter was sold and do not understand complaints that it needs to be simplified. I’m not especially technical and have had no trouble navigating or finding content.
Hoodie
@Geminid: IIRC there was some rumbling in the alt-right ranks that Trump was going soft. Picking Haley might have intensified that.
rikyrah
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
May you have a good recovery.
karen marie
@wjca: It’s not that Trump doesn’t want to win, he just thinks the campaign is a waste of time. He knows he’s going to lose. He’s saving his energy to incite riots starting on November 5th.
RaflW
I love the idea of ridiculing Glenn Kessler as the peddler of “Truth Whoopisies”.
TBone
@HumboldtBlue: priceless 🤣
Geminid
@Hoodie: A Haley pick would definitely have alienated the rightward end of Trump’s coalition. I don’t think Trump wanted to pick her anyway, though. Trump doesn’t like her or her followers because he knows they look down on him.
Also, Trump hated the idea that he might need someone to enhance the ticket’s appeal. That would be an admission that he had deficits. At least, that may have been his thinking a month ago when he picked his running mate.
cain
@karen marie:
They want the algorithms to give them content.
matt
@RaflW: Great piece especially the part about persuading the center by mobilizing your base.
Leto
@Dorothy A. Winsor: the soothsayers and Habermen’s are still trying to decipher the divine signs that were left on the walls… the 57 signs are hard to interpret at times.
Omnes Omnibus
@karen marie: I think that Mastodon and Bluesky appeal to different types of Twitter refugees. That has more impact than ease of use.
TBone
@RaflW: 💜
sdhays
@Leto: Chef’s kiss.
Elizabelle
@HumboldtBlue: That’s excellent. Actual journalist Meredith Shiner is an honorary jackal. Cannot argue with a word.
Chief Oshkosh
@Leto: I don’t know how ratios are presented (I’ve never subscribed to Xitter, Nitter, Bluebird, or Dumbell).
So…what’s the ratio up to now? And how to figure that out on my own going forward?
The Very Reverend Crimson Fire of Compassion
@Chris: I have an idea about what it takes to change that. I think it takes a presidential candidate who treats them with the contempt they deserve, who deals with them sparingly, accepts none of their framing, and largely ignores their demands–and wins office in spite of their bullshit. Only then will the collapse of the self-appointed guardians of acceptable discourse become so obvious that no-one cares what they have to say anymore.
Paul in KY
@TBone: Good to hear!
Dave
@Old School: So someone else posted for him; that reads as entirely too hinged for him at this moment.
Baud
@karen marie:
When I last used it, finding and following people on other instances wasn’t straightforward.
Ksmiami
@CaseyL: oh I know that. It’s beyond time the Democratic Party fight back on this crap
Chris
@The Very Reverend Crimson Fire of Compassion:
That was basically Biden. Didn’t get very far.
Paul in KY
@HumboldtBlue: Bring it hard, sir!
cain
@Baud: You have to follow hashtags for subject matter and then you discover people you can follow. There are also folks that have large followings who all they do is boost posts for discovery.
Spanky
@Jeffro: Might also be considering dropping out of the race because they’re idiots:
wjca
Although there is something to be said for him living in a nice (ha!) dacha on the “shores” of the Aral Sea. Views just for him.
Paul in KY
@hueyplong: I thought about saying something like that too. He did really hate Republicans, though.
matt
@Emily B.: I noticed that point about the DC-centricness of the press corps with the Shapiro vs Walz debate. Shapiro worked in Congress and went to Georgetown. Walz is from outside DC. So of course the political press all swarmed to Shapiro.
matt
@Chris: Biden missed some of the overall strategy. You have to have your own channel to the voters that is active, and you have to tell them what’s on your mind every day. This is what the Harris campaign is doing with social media that’s making them effective at end running around the press gatekeepers.
PJ
@Chris:
Biden’s MO of mostly ignoring the mainstream political press worked up to a point. They had three and a half years to hammer the “Biden is Old” angle, but whereas their attitude towards him mostly seemed to be disdain during his candidacy in 2020, by 2024, in part because of his refusal to bow to their wishes, it had ramped up to hate. When they saw their opportunity after the debate, they gleefully and relentlessly attacked him every day. (A commenter pointed out that one day there were, I think, 17 references to Biden being old on the front page of the NYT.)
As VP, the political press has at best treated Harris as a lightweight, but they didn’t build up any points of attack because they didn’t see the point. So they were backfooted when she became the candidate. They’ve only got two and a half more months to develop a successful attack, and even if they do come up with something, there’s not really enough time to make it stick unless it is something actually serious (which seems highly unlikely.) So Harris should be free to ignore them or engage with them as she sees fit.
Dave B
Also worth mentioning: if Kelly’s statement “does not directly say Trump refused to visit the graves because he thought [the war dead] were losers,” NEITHER DOES Biden’s statement! Biden’s quoted words do not “directly” state a causal relationship between Trump’s thinking the war dead are losers and Trump not visting the graves in France, at least no more than Kelly’s words.
Kelly explicitly states only that Trump thinks the war dead are losers AND Trump wouldn’t visit the graves in France, and Biden explicitly states only that Trump wouldn’t visit the graves in France AND Trump thinks the war dead are losers. Both Biden’s and Kelly’s statements, of course, suggest a causal relationship between the two claim–as, indeed, does common sense–but Kessler is imputing a “connection” to the meaning of Biden’s statement that, by itself, it need not entail.
(There is, I think, some ambiguity in the reference of the pronoun “them” in the Biden quote. Does it refer to all dead service members, or only to those whose graves are in France? If the latter, then Biden may be making a different claim from Kelly, but anyway Trump’s thinking all dead service members are losers entails him thinking that all the ones buried in France are losers , and Biden is still not “directly saying” there’s a causal connection between Trump thinking them losers and not going to the graves.)
Paul in KY
@Chris: I think his heart was good, but he couldn’t accept being 2nd fiddle to anyone else.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@wjca: That too
Chris
@PJ:
Well yeah, like I said, it takes a long time for the press to really find an angle that works, and I doubt (knock on wood) if they’ll find it in time for the election. But in the long term, it becomes a real problem, which is why it’s at best a temporary fix when dealing with a hostile media.
@matt:
This is definitely true, and more on the nose in terms of how to improve on what Biden did.
Leto
@Chief Oshkosh: not sure what’s it’s up to now, but it’s basically the amount of comments versus likes/reshares. If a comment has more comments v likes/reshares it’s a negative ratio, and vice versa.
Scout211
Some new polls today:
Harris leads Trump in new Nebraska 2nd District poll
North Carolina Moves to Toss-up, Setting Up November Battle for Magnificent Seven Swing States
Roanoke College Poll: Harris holds slim lead over Trump in Virginia
cain
@RaflW:
This is a great read, and it validates what a number of people have been saying for years here. We need to stop chasing white working class men. There is an entire industry of consultants telling Democrats to tone it down and reach out to the white people.
At last, we’re finally not going to do that anymore. Get on the train, MFs – we’re going for a ride – a joyful, fast, ride filled with hope. Yeah, that hopey-changey thing is gonna work out for us.
TBone
@cain: on that note! 🎶🤩
Here’s some mood music – celebating the way “weirdo” works
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=imZUqkPlUaQ
Chris
@cain:
Sure, stop chasing white working-class men.
But also, if I may add, stop assuming that the way to peel off white working-class men is to run a 1990s Third Way DLCer who’s the wet dream of every pundit at CNN, NPR, the New York Times, and the Washington Post.
cain
@Chris:
Those newspapers are filled with editors who were Reagan youths. They don’t want to see a liberal Democratic party. They want to see a centrist one.
We were one, and now we’re moving back to where we need to be. Not a republican lite party that caters to white men.
Manyakitty
@brantl: say it again for the people in back.
Booger
@Leto: ISWYDT.
But Heinzsight is always 20/20.
Baud
Via reddit, Another Republican for Harris
cain
@Baud: We seem to still love our bipartisanship stuff. While I suppose it’s fine but Comey fucked us and I don’t have as much of a fig leaf to give. I’ll give a blackberry bramble though. :)
R'Chard
I would much rather fact-checkers checked the actual words narrowly, instead of cutting corners and making assumptions about what they think people meant. But no, bothsiderism is here, and people can pretend they’re ‘fact-checkers’ instead of ‘influencers.’
There is no ‘because’ in Biden’s statement. Where is anyone getting that? They’re not; they’re concocting it out of thin air.
(Can’t say that using a comma helps, either; it should be a period, or it’s a run-on sentence. But that’s how it’s done these days.)
Baud
@cain:
Eh, When Republicans find turn coat Dems to support them, they throw it on our faces. We should do the same with Republicans who put country over party.
SatanicPanic
@PJ: It could just be that Harris is a great candidate. What would they find on her now? She’s been elected to like four different offices.
Chris
@cain:
They want to see the Democrats as a centrist party, and yet for at least a quarter century in which it was one, they never once treated it as such. All through the Carter and Clinton years they insisted on pretending it was some sort of Bolshevik conspiracy.
The hell of it is that the rich and the media probably could have turned the Democrats into something much more pliable to their interests on a semi-permanent basis, if they’d only shown even the slightest interest in rewarding them for their DLC years. Instead, the message the Democrats internalized is that no matter how much they do, nothing will ever get these people to treat them as anything other than proletarian interlopers. So now we’re back to where we were.
moonbat
@wjca: Oh for sure. Biden will do the same thing as a surrogate for the campaign. “If you trust me, you can trust her.”
Sad, as you say, that some folks need that type of reassurance, but there you are.
What’s subversive about Walz as a VP candidate is that he takes all the midwestern, salt of the earth, diner culture tropes the GOP and media have been trading on for years to hide the racist/misogynist animus of the R party (economic anxiety lol) and brings them back home to the D column: Mind your own business, help out your neighbors, calling out the hateful weirdness for what it is, and how about that football game last weekend. It’s a wonderful breath of fresh air.
gene108
I just want one intrepid reporter to find the 19 people Trump said, from the debate with Biden, could refute Secretary Kelly’s remarks about Trump calling people in the military “suckers” and “losers”.
A) They are real and have mysteriously kept their mouths shut all these years.
B) Trump’s lost his mind and believes 19 people being there who are not real.
C) Trump’s lying.
We really need to know if we can rule out A or B. I think too many reporters just guess C.
Belafon
@cain: There’s something to that. I prefer the indie music station, kxt.org, 91.7FM in the DFW area, to Spotify because I want some things I would never be able to find on my own. At the same time, I can count on kxt to not play Kid Rock even though I have heard Killer Mike played right after Bonnie Raitt.
Baud
@SatanicPanic:
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Chris:
The Dems were a centrist party in the Carter years?
Villago Delenda Est
@Baud: Kinzinger still hasn’t grokked that the rot started with Nixon and accelerated under Reagan.
Baud
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Carter was a centrist back then. It’s what led to bad relations with Dems in Congress and general dysfunction.
Geminid
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I think the Dems have always been what I would call a Center/Left Party, at least in my voting lifetime.
Chris
@moonbat:
Some of my favorite fictional heroes are white guys who are coded with all the heartland tropes Republicans love to claim, except they’re actually total liberals. MacGyver, the anti-gun activist. Matlock, the patron saint of defense attorneys. Elliot Spencer from Leverage. Everything about Tim Walz gave me flashbacks to these guys.
SatanicPanic
@Baud: sure but if no one else found anything disqualifying I don’t see them doing it now. Obama had some dumb stuff thrown at him but nothing really stuck like Clinton is a horndog or Biden is really old. I suspect Harris will end up more like Obama in that regard.
Chris
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Carter sure as hell was. Admittedly I may be jumping the gun by extending that to the whole party. There were a hell of a lot of old school New Dealers left at the time, which is part of why he had such bad relations with Congress.
Manyakitty
@Spanky: maybe he should have flown in on his falcon.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
As someone who is center-left, I appreciate the fact that’s where Democrats have been. I disagree with leftists on a number of issues.
Baud
@SatanicPanic:
Just look at what we’ve learned about Vance that hadn’t surfaced before. And he’s only Veep.
I’m not suggesting there’s something real to be found, but we can’t assume there’s not anything they can manipulate into a fake scandal.
And of course, once she’s president, there will be all kinds of decisions they can use against her, just like they did with her Dem predecessors.
Baud
Neither centrists nor leftists have the numbers to win on their own. The party is always going to vibrate within that space.
moonbat
@Chris: Agreed. Can harken the trope even farther back to fictional heroes like Andy Griffith (There he is again!) or Atticus Finch.
Sort of reminds me of my grandfather who grew up in super racist Oklahoma, but held the simple principle of fairness as paramount in all of his dealings. Through that, and by having one of the smoothest running bullshit detectors of all time, he didn’t fall into the hateful mental traps so many of his neighbors did.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: come sit by me. 😁
karen marie
@Omnes Omnibus: I can agree with that.
Chris
@moonbat:
The two institutions that dominated my grandmother’s life were the U.S. Army and the Catholic Church. She was by a wide margin the most left-wing person in the family, myself included, until the day she died.
There are a lot of liberals in places you wouldn’t stereotypically expect.
Captain C
@Baud:
At this time all the FTFNYT needs is “someone close to Harris,” which could be a Republican Senator who sat near her back when she was in the Senate.
SatanicPanic
@Baud: Vance only had two years in the Senate, and we were just discussing how the Ryan campaign half-assed their oppo research. And those are real things that Vance believes.
I agree that things will come up when she’s president, but for now I don’t see it
@Baud:
Chris
@Captain C:
You’re too kind.
I very much believe that as long as the source is anonymous, they don’t even need a real source. They’ll just make one up if they have to. I mean, who’s going to fact-check them? How would that even work? It’s essentially a free action, which means it’s almost certainly going to be taken sooner or later. (In this case, I suspect “sooner” was many many years ago).
Kay
@HumboldtBlue:
Judy Woodruff must not listen to Blinken. He’s moved the goalposts again- today he said their objective since October 7th has been defending Israel and diplomacy to avoid a wider war.
Not a word about a ceasefire and (as usual from him) not a word about civilian casualties.
Does anyone in media listen to the actual Biden officials? The coverage never has any connection to what the Biden State Department says.
The State Department speaks on this nearly every day and so does Netanyahu. US journalists could just read the coverage of actual events in the foreign press instead of exclusively looking at this as about the US election.
H-Bob
If today Biden said “The sun rises in the East” and Trump said “The sun goes around the Earth”, then the NYT, Washington Post and the other media lice would say:
“On Midsummer’s Day In Washington DC, the sun actually rose in the direction of East South East — Biden is so old that he can’t hold a compass properly”;
while “Trump is recounting a traditional belief”!
Caravelle
Craziest thing about that fact-check is: Biden didn’t say the two were connected either did he.
It’s like the one where Clinton said Harris wouldn’t be sending love letters to Trump and the fact-check talked about how Trump didn’t literally do this and it’s hey dumbfuck, if you’re going to be this literal-minded Clinton never claimed that he did.