So…maybe a little Scout to soothe… 16.6 lbs already. nine TEN weeks old. Thinks she’s as big as Bixby.
Open thread
by TaMara| 45 Comments
This post is in: Dog Blogging, Open Threads
So…maybe a little Scout to soothe… 16.6 lbs already. nine TEN weeks old. Thinks she’s as big as Bixby.
Open thread
This post is in: Readership Capture
Ok. We are going to have the calendar printed, but I need another recount. I am planning an initial run of 100 calendars. If I do 200, the price for printing significantly drops. However, I do not want to get stuck with a shitload of calendars.
So do me a solid. IF you want a calendar send an email to [email protected], your real name, how many you want, and in the subject line simply put 1, 2, 3, 4, or however many you want to order.
The price is going to be $22, plus 3 bucks for shipping, so $25.00 total. I hope to have them by Friday and will label them and ship them the following Monday.
*** Update ***
Like herding god damned cats. We’re not using the other fucking places you suggested because we’re not. We have someone affiliated with the blog who will do this and give us a nice product, so we are going through them.
All you need to know is the price, which is above. And the fucking email address to send an email indicating how many you want. If you don’t have access to your email RIGHT NOW, you can send an email tomorrow. Or Sunday. Or Monday I don’t give a shit.
Then I will order the calendars, and I will email you all with an address to send the check (I WILL ALSO ACCEPT PAYPAL BUT LET’S NOT GET AHEAD OF OURSELVES FFS). When I get the check, I will send you the calendar.
I will pull this god damned car over. We are not going to turn this into the fucking invasion of Normandy. Christ almighty. And the calendar will start on 1 February.
Alain can you sticky this damned post so it stays the first post on the blog for a few days?
I’m shutting down my computer and doing breathing exercises. Go to hell.
*** Update ***
We’re up to about 70 so far. Are you all emailing me? Why not? What is wrong with you?
by Adam L Silverman| 142 Comments
This post is in: America, Domestic Politics, Election 2016, Foreign Affairs, Open Threads, Politics, Popular Culture, Post-racial America, Silverman on Security, Not Normal
Late yesterday evening I addressed the quickly developing disinformation campaign being called release the memo after the hashtag of the same name. I specifically wrote:
Apparently Congressman Nunes, or folks working for/with him on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, have produced a four page memo alleging significant abuse of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act by the Obama Administration, specifically the Department of Justice and the FBI, against Republicans. The memo is supposedly classified. This has led to the creation of a release the memo hashtag (click at your own risk of sanity). This would seem to explain Sean Hannity’s opening tease on Fox News tonight.
And:
It is hard to get decent info at this point, but if I’m following all this correctly the memo being referred to is the result of Congressman Nunes’ monomania regarding lawful unmasking by the Obama Administration in 2015 and 2016 and the attempt to create a controversy and scandal over FISA violations as reported by the chronically wrong and easily duped John Solomon at The Hill, as well as his equally odious, one sided, and misleading reporting on the text messages between two FBI officials during the campaign.
Twenty-four hours later we have more clarity on exactly how the alleged memo was created and the purpose to which it is being put. Hamilton68, funded by the German Marshall Fund to track Russian active measures on social media, has been tracking the release the memo hashtag.
Natasha Bertrand at Business Insider has further details.
Russia-linked Twitter bots have jumped on the bandwagon.
#ReleaseTheMemo is the top-trending hashtag among Twitter accounts linked to Russian influence operations, according to Hamilton 68, a website launched last year that says it tracks Russian propaganda in near-real time.
The frequency with which the accounts have been promoting the hashtag has spiked by 233,000% over the past 48 hours, according to the site. The accounts’ references to the “memo,” meanwhile, have increased by 68,000%.
The most-shared domain among the accounts has been WikiLeaks, and the most-shared URL has been a link to WikiLeaks’ “submit” page.
WikiLeaks said on Thursday that it would reward anyone with access to the “FISA abuse memo” who chooses to submit it to the site. The Russia-linked accounts have evidently been sharing the “submit” page to push the memo’s release.
Bret Schafer, a communications coordinator at the German Marshall Fund’s Alliance for Securing Democracy who tracks the Hamilton 68 accounts, said he “certainly can’t remember” the last time the researchers had seen a topic “promoted to this level” by the Russia-linked bots and trolls.
“On a normal day, our top hashtag is typically used around 400 times in a 48-hour period by the network we track,” he said in an email on Friday.
“As of right now, #ReleaseTheMemo has been used over 3,000 times (and five other related hashtags are in the top 10),” he said. “In total, they’ve easily shared more than 4,500 hashtags on the topic in the past two days, and our top URL is Assange’s offer to pay for a copy of the memo. That certainly seems to be a sign of a coordinated effort by the bots and trolls.”
Congressman Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House Select Permanent Committee on Intelligence – and the only member of that committee to actually successfully prosecute an espionage case – had this to say:
a profoundly misleading set of talking points drafted by Republican staff attacking the FBI and its handling of the investigation. Rife with factual inaccuracies and referencing highly classified materials that most of Republican Intelligence Committee members were forced to acknowledge they had never read, this is meant only to give Republican House members a distorted view of the FBI. This may help carry White House water, but it is a deep disservice to our law enforcement professionals.”
Where does this leave our beleaguered hero Congressman Nunes, the chairman of the House Select Permanent Committee on Intelligence? According to GOP strategist Rick Wilson he’s right in the thick of things.
Anon sends:
"Pssssst. The Memo is just the Strozk texts, again. This time repackaged by a nunes staffer."
Do with this what you will. I'm making no judgement yet.
— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) January 19, 2018
Anon sends again:
"This is theater. Nunes staff briefed Fox (Hannity) ahead of time."
— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) January 19, 2018
Also, OpSec people, OpSec!!!!!
And whoever anon is, he at least uses Protonmail. Props.
— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) January 19, 2018
Wilson’s anonymous source has now been verified by subsequent reporting.
One thing about that document: Republican staffers wrote it.
Even the most plugged-in news consumer could be forgiven for thinking the classified memo is an executive branch document that exposes wrongdoing within the Justice Department and the FBI. It isn’t.
The document, which alleges abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act during the FBI’s quiet counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign in the final months of the 2016 election, was actually compiled by Republican staffers on the House Intelligence Committee. That committee voted along partisan lines this week to allow any member of Congress to take a peek at the document themselves. Republican members soon flocked to a secure room to read the memo written by their allies — and then ran to tell the press about it.
If the memo does eventually go public, it won’t end well for Republicans, Susan Hennessey, the executive editor of the legal commentary site Lawfare, argued Friday. “After causing completely unnecessary chaos today, this memo will be released in some redacted [form] in a few weeks and prove to be an utter embarrassment to Nunes personally, the [House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence] majority, and frankly to US House of Representatives,” Hennessey predict
What I estimated last night was correct.
Since these (the Simpson transcripts just released by HPSCI) basically shoot everything Congressman Nunes, Congressman Gaetz, Congressman DeSantis, Congressman Jordan, and several other GOP members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Oversight, Justice, or other committees have been saying about the Special Counsel and his investigation and the FBI’s role in the counterintelligence investigation pertaining to the President that was begun in July 2016, they needed to do something to change the narrative. Enter the four page classified memo supposedly alleging that the Obama Administration, the DOJ, the FBI, and other parts of the US Intel Community were all conspiring against Republicans and conservatives in general and the President, his businesses, and his campaign in specific. Leaked to Fox News and teed up for Sean Hannity’s diatribe for an audience of one this evening. Given what happened the last time that Congressman Nunes tried to get creative in screening fire for the President, I fully expect that if this memo is ever declassified it won’t survive first contact with the actual subject matter experts the news media brings in to consult on it. Except, of course, for Fox News, talk radio, the alt-right news media (Breitbart, Gateway Pundit, etc) and social media crowd, Wikileaks, RT, and Sputnik. They’ll all, amazingly, have the exact same talking points. As will the White House, the President on twitter, and the aforementioned GOP members of Congress. This amount of coincidence takes a lot of work!
This is a desperate play to try to change the subject, to try to divert the news media’s attention, and it appears to have been fed to one of the specific Fox News personalities that we know are tailoring their programming directly to and for the President. Anyone want to estimate the over/under that Congressman Nunes actually either gave Hannity the memo he cobbled together or just read it to him, despite the fact that it was classified because it cherry picks material from classified DOJ, FBI, and US Intelligence Community information? Finally, releasing a partisan staff product memo isn’t going to answer any actual questions.
The only way to put the issue to bed would be to declassify and release the FISA warrant application. That is not going to happen. And you’ll notice that Congressman Nunes, nor his exceedingly shrill partners in crime – Congressman Gaetz, Congressman DeSantis, Congressman King (IA), Congressman Meadows, Congressman Jordan, Congressman Zeldin, Sean Hannity, Wikileakes, etc – are actually calling for that to happen. All they want is Congressman Nunes cherry picked material disseminated to create maximum outrage and diversion. Which is, apparently, what Russian state media, Russian intelligence funded trolls, Russian controlled bots, Russia’s fellow travelers on the alt-right, the Fox News personalities who are programming their shows to speak to an audience of one (the President), and these members of Congress all want. This is a strange convergence of interests. And this is why they are all using the exact same talking points, messaging, and language. A lot of work went into creating this coincidence.
Updated at 9:26 PM EST
Here’s an example of the clear eyed, quality thinking that has gone into releasing the memo:
GOP frosh Matt Gaetz, who wants Mueller fired, insisted to me that the FBI texts explicitly showed they were “talking about a plan to strategically leak information to embarrass Trump.”
They don’t.
I asked him to explain. Here’s how that went for him. https://t.co/NoFUNv2rGc pic.twitter.com/YaLbrUxbjU
— Ryan J. Reilly (@ryanjreilly) January 20, 2018
Genius!
Stay frosty (or warm if you’re where it’s cold)!
Open thread!
This post is in: Dolt 45, Open Threads, Proud to Be A Democrat, Republican Stupidity, Republicans in Disarray!, All we want is life beyond the thunderdome
BREAKING: AP source: Trump phones Senate Dem leader Schumer, invites him to White House to try to reach deal to avert shutdown.
— Meg Kinnard (@MegKinnardAP) January 19, 2018
.
Remember when we’d have been talking about our plans for the upcoming weekend?…
Republicans, 2017 – "The president is a genius dealmaker"
Republicans, 2018 – "You need to promise us he's not going to say or do anything during this negotiation. We are FREAKING OUT."
— Better Than Ezra Klein (@Yeggo) January 19, 2018
The fact that so many Republicans are comfortable going on record saying they don’t 100% trust the president to negotiate a favorable deal with Schumer does tell you something, doesn’t it.
— Noah Rothman (@NoahCRothman) January 19, 2018
Can’t understand the Congressional Repubs without grasping their fear of a good chunk of their party’s base, which is mercurial, impulsive, & stupid, & which froths at the mouth on command from the Repub’s mercurial, impulsive, stupid, cruel, & narcissistic president.
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) January 19, 2018
Trump doesn't know how government works. He think if they go bankrupt, someone else picks up the tab and he walks away unscathed.
That's not how any of this works. Trump owns the shutdown. The GOP owns this entire mess.
— lawhawk (@lawhawk) January 19, 2018
JUST IN: @ABC News/WaPo poll finds substantially greater Republican risk in a government shutdown, with 48% saying they’d blame Pres. Trump and the GOP, vs. 28% for congressional Democrats. https://t.co/IkMxZajc8d pic.twitter.com/VmNXp8qrvj
— World News Tonight (@ABCWorldNews) January 19, 2018
Friday Evening Open Thread: But Trump Has A <em>Party</em> to Get To!…Post + Comments (173)
by Betty Cracker| 143 Comments
This post is in: Nature, Open Threads
Some feral swine I encountered while out photographing wildlife several months back:
They are surprisingly cute when they aren’t charging at you through razor-sharp scrub palms. Open thread!
by DougJ| 215 Comments
This post is in: Assholes
I’ve grown to hate all the talk about ERODING NORMS, because so far, legislation created by the wonky Paul Ryan (and voted for by the serious Lindsey Graham and Benn Sasse) has done more damage to the country than anything Trump did that another Republican president would not have done.
But…the Stormy Daniels stuff. I don’t think it would have made any difference in November 2016 because apparently no one cared about seventeen accusations of harassment and assault. It’s so strange, though, that a blowjob from an intern brought impeachment on Clinton, whereas Trump was getting spanked by a porn star while his wife was pregnant had a newborn without any repercussions.
One thing I didn’t even think of til recently was how under Clinton, we endless heard “How can Hillary stay with him”, “what about their marriage”, etc. I haven’t heard a peep out of that from the media, and it wasn’t until I saw this tweet that even remembered this might affect Trump’s marriage.
Have said it many times, but going to 're-up': There's a strong chance Donald Trump becomes the first president to get divorced while in office
— ethan epstein (@ethanepstiiiine) January 19, 2018
by DougJ| 92 Comments
This post is in: C.R.E.A.M.
With a new baby, I don’t have the time and energy to write more than a few real posts a week, but I want to keep the fundraising going and I don’t want it to be just me putting the thermometer up an saying GIMME.
So I thought I’d try something new. You olds may not be hip to this, but there’s a thing that the kids in music do today called “feating”. You can google it. I’m going to be feating some commenters that I think will write fun, interesting posts, much better than I can do right now! They’ll throw up the Balloon Juice Nowhere To Hide thermometer in the post. This way, at least you’ll get something for your money.
We will start off with Jewish Steel, a great guy with good taste in music. He’ll start sometime over the weekend.
If you don’t like posts of the people I’m feating, blame me, not them! Maybe go a little gentler on them in the comments than you usually do.
In the meantime, let’s hit our goal for Conor Lamb in PA-18. Donnie Dementia was raising money for his opponent yesterday.
Update. Here’s a picture of the dog guarding the baby.
I’m tired as hell, I’m not the cat I used to bePost + Comments (92)