Eager to obtain vindication for the pre-election falsehood they spread about the Hunter Biden story, journalists falsely claim that the CIA blamed Russia for it.
I heard this sloppily reported "story" on NPR this morning, and wondered how long it would take to be debunked . . . Ha! Less than 12 hours! I believe that's a record.
Conservative Media usually catches these lies immediately and they usually get it from a non media conservative source, AKA, conspiracy theorist on Twatter. But so much effort has been put into discrediting these patriots that the story immediately devolves into a fight between Left/Right media personalities while the actually true story is ignored or obliquely mentioned. I have seen this exact scenario play out dozens of times.
Another (very frigging) impressive chronicling of a large amount of information on the media deception occurring.
No doubt the timing (late October near the election) exposed many alleged “standards” or ethical standards of journalism to be complete and utter BS. Half of the country was willing to lie or promote lies or be complicit in lies to change an election outcome. And willing to censor anyone and anything.
They were going to steal the election regardless. They even told us they were going to do it. No honest reporting on a Biden scandal could ever compete with literal truck loads of Biden only ballots delivered in the dead of the night in the swing states.
Intuitively speaking, one would have to be a zombie to not expect that what your saying about the ballots is probably true to some extent or some variation. Clearly this was going to be a DNC victory come hell or high water. Personally I suspect the CIA was involved in the whole capitol riot BS, although I obviously concede I have no direct evidence. I have a fair amount of objectivity because I didn’t especially like DJT or his policies.
Yet court after court basically concluded there was no evidence of what you are asserting. Are you just surmising this (like myself) or do you believe there is direct evidence?
That’s not what the courts said. No court ever heard any evidence. SCOTUS couldn’t even grow the balls to hear such important cases. If you have a moment, read Justice Clarence Thomas dissent on SCOTUS refusing to hear the Pennsylvania case from couple weeks ago. He covers it very well.
Courts magically always discover “no standing” whenever they don’t want to take a case. Absolute cowards and a menace to society.
This is why trump supporters were and are rightfully outraged- no court even gave them the respect to hear out the evidence. Why would anyone trust such a court system?
I’m not disputing that, since I did not follow it closely. But are you saying they never reached the point of looking at evidence? Because the suits lacked standing?
Unless I am mistaken they did hear evidence and concluded it was circumstantial or insufficient to conclude it had a material effect on the election.
Lack of standing, or no jurisdiction or no "material effect"... Sort like ignoring evidence of fraud because the election is over, which is kind of like ignoring a murder because the victim is already dead.
This is false information, and an astoundingly bad analogy. From one of Trump's appointees - "“Free, fair elections are the lifeblood of our democracy,” wrote Judge Stephanos Bibas, who was appointed to the court by Mr. Trump. “Charges of unfairness are serious. But calling an election unfair does not make it so. Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here.”
Does that sound like "ignoring the results because an election is over"? Gtfo with that dishonest BS. I wish he won too, but you can wish in one hand and shit in the other, and neither one changes the reality that Trump didn't lose because of voter fraud. Media fraud, maybe.
I continue to come back to the original question- where is the evidence?
Sworn affidavits of what? I mean you could have 10,000 sworn affidavits and they could be truthful but that in and of itself doesn’t mean anything.
I still have yet to see a single shred of actual evidence. One would think if it was that compelling, those filing the various suits would have by now made it publicly available.
There was a great deal of evidence available; evidence means nothing until it is examined and cross-examined. Then it can become proof. Most claims of "no evidence" really are claims of "no proof," which is correct. It cannot become roof until examined, and none has been permitted to be examined. The fix was in long ago, and there is nothing we can do about it.
New info today from JusttheNews. The site is run by a legit, decorated, journo, John Solomon. He simply is on the "wrong side" nowadays with his mildly right-biased viewpoint. Like Sharyl Attkisson, his reporting is legit and sources are trustworthy, he just has the traditional normal slight bias of topic selection and outlook, comparable to what the MSM had for decades before they went off the rails.
Yes, that's generally right. For example, Maricopa County (AZ) simply fought the AZ State Senate's attempt to subpoena their computer equipment for inspection. By the time the Senate could have gotten access to actually take a look, according to our election rules the state would have to certify the results.
All of it basically takes the form of Bush-Gore 2000: we can't figure it out in a fair way in time, so let's just stop where we are.
Just so the misinformation doesn't continue to spread, I'll repost for you what I posted in response to the OP elsewhere, from one of his own links - "judges, lawyers, and other observers described the suits as "frivolous"[4] and "without merit".
Trump's own judicial appointments said things like - “Charges of unfairness are serious. But calling an election unfair does not make it so. Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here.”
I voted for Trump twice btw. Don't fall for the partisan hype like OP and others did.
What the fuck does it matter if someone "described" something as frivolous? You can describe shit to someone however you want. Im sure Harvey Weinstein described his accusers as "full of shit" that didn't make it so.
I never voted for Trump, and care more about fair elections than any candidate. And you're whitewashing it too much. For example, in Wisconsin, the SC vote was 4-3 with four GOP-appointed judges and three Dem-appointed. The one GOP judge who voted against, ending the case, explicitly said that there might be a case on the merits, but it would have had to have been brought in Oct 2020 before the election. He explicitly decided at least a major part of the case (regarding allowing late ballots I think) on laches (not acting soon enough), not merits. Plus see the links I sent below about where status of many cases is.
I watched at least 40 hours of different state election fraud hearings from which not one single sworn affidavit(don’t know the proper noun for that) from a poll worker alleging fraud has been charged with perjury. Real ballot audits have been fought tooth and nail in Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, Wisconsin and Michigan. Judges are beginning to allow real audits to take place and judges are finally starting to admit election process changes were unlawful although little is to nothing is being done as it relates to the 202 election.
More will be coming out slowly and will continue to be ignored by the MSM. It happened. The Time story admitted how they did it. It will happen again. Democrats are passing laws making every election fraud tactic they used legal going forward.
Both sides stretch the law to help their side. The Democrat ballot harvesting is no more "fraud" than the republican gerrymandering. There were no ballot dumps of all Biden ballots. Perjury is incredibly common but trials are so incredibly rare as to be statistically non-existant. Saying no one has been tried for perjury is irrelevant.
You don’t think a politicized judicial system which has spent the last 5 years going after everyone remotely connected to Trump would have easily gone after one of the thousands of signed affidavits if they could prove they lied on the affidavit? C’mon dude. Signed affidavits are literal court admissible.
How do you "prove" someone lied when they say they saw ballots being double-counted? Or *say* they saw anything? It's not a question of provable facts, never has been. And no, I don't think they're going to convince an AG in East bumfuck, PA to go after every, or any, random pollwatcher grandma, as readily as they'll be able to deputize a minion in the DC swamp to go after Mannafort or Stone. Not even close.
Ballot tabulating machines that can print ballots in order to achieve a goal-seeked result. In the manual. America's elections are designed for corrupt outcomes.
What OP stated is straight out of the Voting machine manual which can be read on secretary of states websites. I researched this myself and read it.
And no, I am not a fan of mike lindell or Sidney Powell. I think Sidney made the situation worse by taking attention away from real cases and putting them on crazy theories.
Did a quick search, the actual wording is "expected results", and it's a test mode. Printed ballots are randomly generated (not programmable), then checked to confirm correct operation before voting even starts. USA Today is certainly biased but the check here seems pretty airtight - https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.usatoday.com/amp/3973030001
Your non-stop defense of fraud and of anything any Democrat ever did is getting old. The media fraud was real; the conspiracy was real, as Time magazine proudly boasted. Your argument that the people who benefited from all of it, and who refuse to allow any closer look at what happened, are without sin does not pass the laugh test.
Try reading the rest of the thread before you make an ass of yourself next time, Bill Heath. The post I was responding to is objectively, demonstrably false. but here you come in on your white horse to save the day to defend another half baked conspiracy theory. Mr "anti-fraud"! And you say I don't pass the laugh test? Break out a mirror, pal. Who do you think you're fooling?
Almost like in 2014 the party that was in power didn't care. What party had the President in 2014? Oh right the racist politician hanging out with anti-semite Louis Farrakhan.
Yes. As I wrote below it's very clearly referring to a test setting. It explicitly says the ballots are RANDOM, which is useless for controlling an outcome. The manual wording is "expected" results, not "goal seeking" or whatever. As in, the machine generates random ballots, stores the results in internal memory, counts the ballots it just printed, and compares the results against the stored, "expected" results to ensure internal integrity.
I mean, just on the face of it, you really think if they were goin to make the machines able to control the outcome of an election, they'd write it in the manual? C'mon my man...
I posted a similar comment today at Taibbi’s piece today, but will repeat the point here.
I think it’s near or maybe past time honest journalists like Greenwald, Taibbi and the handful of others (across the political spectrum) who still do look for evidence and cite to it in their reporting, stop paying attention to and analyzing the lies of the liars in the mainstream media and on Twitter and Facebook.
In a perverse way, highlighting their lies and how they cover for each other seems to be feeding the beast, when starving it might well be more effective at building the spaces and audiences for the truth tellers.
There is a massive audience that completely tunes out the liars, and (as part of that audience) I’d like to hear less about the liars, and more about the substantive things that coverage of the liars is stealing attention from.
I guess I just think the people who want to believe the lies will continue to believe them no matter how many times the lies are pointed out to them, and the rest of us already know the liars lie, ignore them as much as we can, seek out truth-tellers, and want to move past the liars and let them rot in their own disgusting juices in their echo chambers of irrelevancy together.
Plus I think it would be super-funny if Taibbi, Greenwald, and the handful of others more or less simultaneously announced that they’re done with media-liar-coverage and actually stopped following the liars antics on social media and in the pages of the WaPo and New York Times and HuffPost and the Atlantic and so on.
Maybe I’m totally wrong, but I think the people who care about the inbred liberal media types and their circle-jerks of lies are a tiny minority, and a very large majority is hungry for whatever is not that.
I was thinking something similar the other day. Maybe ignoring them and not saying their names will decrease the incentive to lie like many suggest doing with serial killers(that comparison is applicable).
But then I thought - someone with integrity and credibility has to chronicle our nation’s collapse so GG is one of the only ones qualified to do that job.
I do also wonder what scandals and stories they are spiking. Conservative media, at least the ones that can be trusted, catch a lot of them which is why so much effort is put into discrediting the Conservative media as an institution. I have read so much fake news over the least several years that I can catch what is misleading. But that talent took a lot of reading, cynicism and open mindedness which this content is explicitly meant to diminish. Apparently enough people are learning how to do this that the media has begun to tell us not to do that! That gives me hope.
The vast majority of the political and corporate class in this country has not yet been woken up to the falsehoods perpetrated by the mainstream media. Thus, while I often feel the same as you, I think it's vital that people like Greenwald and Taibbi continue documenting the evidence upholding traditional journalistic standards. That kind of reporting won't be outright dismissed quite as easily by those still hypnotized by mainstream media, and may occasionally break through. There should be more people documenting this clearly and carefully.
Also, crazy how nobody mentions the fact that the Biden laptop emails were authenticated using DKIM signatures.
My point is that’s the vast majority of that insider class will not change their minds, because they are in on the long con and benefitting from it.
Course correction will not come from that cohort. It will be up to the outsiders who currently ignore the propaganda machines and are ignored by the MSM but have very limited good alternative sources (Greenwald, Taibbi, etc.) with which to learn about each other and ideas that might have potential to make useful change.
Adding to the growing pile of evidence that the outsiders are correct in their contempt for the overlords is less helpful at moving things along, in my view, than putting the time now spent documenting the insiders’ MSM corruption than putting that time into documenting other things, about what the outsiders are doing to fight back or create alternatives , for example, that’s ignored by MSM.
Maybe the outsiders aren’t doing anything so there’s nothing to report and MSM ignorance of the lowly peasants is justifiable.
Or maybe the lowly peasants are more interested in secrecy for their resistance movements than growing by attracting new recruits, so they avoid talking to any media, alternative or MSM.
I don’t know. I just know more attention slathered on MSM assholes by really good reporters seems like a tragic waste of the reporters’ time and their readers’ time.
Maybe I just need to skip reading those pieces. But sometimes it seems like it takes up 25-30% of their time and energy, and it’s sad to think about what else that time and energy could be put into, and how those other things could be more effective toward changing things for the better.
I absolutely agree. Many have simply turn off news media altogether. Disgusted by falsehood and contradictions from liberal to conservative outlets, making it an endeavor to get to the truth. In Twitter, I follow some journalists with proven integrity. But being capable of impartial assessment is going out of style replaced by “I feel”.
Great comment, however I think this is a type of Renaissance moment, hopefully, and that a lot more people, sheeple, are starting to realize the level of control that these media conglomerates carry over them. I do agree and think that more substantive pieces will come out, however this is possibly the most important shift in modern journalism, also I do truly enjoy watching these MSM hacks getting dragged to the literary woodshed.
I understand where you are coming from, and sometimes get tired of another article dealing with the topic, but I certainly don’t want to follow these people yet do like to know what lies or just crappy reporting is being passed around and believed. As others have mentioned as well, these articles (or the information they contain) are good for sharing with others we can hope might open their eyes. While I trust Glenn on these issues, depending on the topic, I’m still going to try to verify or get another view - but these articles help speed that process up a lot.
"Catalog the lies" of Corp Media, YES. it would be great to have access to an Exel Spreadsheet documenting ALL LIES, by Journalist, Media Outlet, Date, Link to Lie, Link to Info demonstrating it is a lie. Unfortunately those same people who tweet and retreat TWO SENTENCES worth of false info., are NOT gonna take the time nor will they have the interest to read a well thought out, well investigated piece of journalism as in Greenwald and others' articles. Sad but true
I wondered about that rose thing today too, seeing it for the first time. It either indicates I’m a paying subscriber and the date I subscribed, or that I have my own SubStack, both of which are true.
That the Intercept was part of suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story is painful for me. I had such high hopes that it would take the WikiLeaks work even further. But now it's a Deep State fakes factory, like much else of the Western MSM. I thought at one point they should stop calling themselves the Intercept, as governments here in the West have nothing to fear from them intercepting anything. Then I realized that the name still applies, as now they help Intercept truthful information about government actions from the public, who needs to know what these officials are doing now more than ever. Epic Fail.
Certainly not a popular view here, but I think there are still a lot of excellent journo's over at The Intercept: Ryan Grimm, Liliana Segura, Natasha Lennard, Lee Fang and others. I generally steer clear of any political reporting, but they continue to do great work on criminal reform, the surveillance state and corporate corruption that is barely covered by other outlets. Loosing Mr. Greenwald was a great loss, but there are other great journo's over there as well.
The problem isn't the quality of the journalists it's the editorial shackles now placed upon them. If bosses can violate the working agreement on editorial independence of a founding member what are they not allowing the remaining journalists to cover? Corporate corruption is only part of the story and is a branch of a rotten tree, the heart of which is centered on American violations of International Law, the bombings and overthrow of governments that Washington doesn't like and the control of information and mythical narratives which are aided by journalistic malpractice in hiding the details of who is doing what to whom.
I agree editorial bias is a risk, but so is journalistic bias and bias comes in many forms. I'm not certain having an editor make a bad call in one area means they will make a bad call on every topic.
The editor became a thing in journalism because it never hurts to have someone objective check your work. Sometimes editors make bad calls, or make decisions based on things we don't see. Some editors are terrible and should be doing something else.
Editorial review is not just top down, but can also be lateral. I have tremendous respect for Mr. Greewald. After his departure from The Intercept a journalist I enjoy reading complimented Mr. Greenwald and thanked him for bringing her to The Intercept, but also pointed out that he once asked her to kill a story on behalf of Betsy Reed. I don't know what the story was so cannot comment if it was a good or bad call, but people make editorial decisions for a host of reasons both good and bad and it's very domain dependent. An editor is capable of making excellent decisions on say criminal justice, or environmental coverage, but terrible decisions on their political coverage.
The corporate stuff is more nuanced and difficult to call, but if you have not read The Intercept's coverage on the Dakota Pipeline's and how it affects Indigenous people it's worth reading. You may agree or disagree with their coverage, but I don't sense corporate, or editorial bias in their reporting. They cover a series of corporate corruption stories where I feel they are credible, but I am always open to someone pointing out specifics on where they got it wrong and I should not trust them.
A format like Substack presents it's own challenge. Here we need to assume the writer is either excellent at detecting their own bias, or has an editor for their work we don't see. Either way, no one is above scrutiny. Not even a journalist I respect as much as Mr. Greewald.
Nobody would suggest that Glenn or others on Substack don't have biases or make errors... the difference between these independents and the others is the fact that they let the facts interpret the story, not the story interpret the facts. It is obvious by now that much of the media only tells the story it believes its audience wants to hear, and frames it in a way that doesn't always include factual evidence.
The reporting on the Rub-n-Tug Murders in Atlanta, for instance. There is not one shred of evidence that the women killed in Atlanta were targeted out of Anti-Asian/White Supremacist hate... but that hasn't stopped NYT and WaPo from "flooding the zone" with exactly that narrative.
The fact that the Intercept is looking at the Dakota pipeline from the viewpoint of the "oppressed" tribes, rather than the cost/benefit analysis of many factors (union jobs, local economics, climate change tradeoffs - pipeline v. tanker) doesn't impress me. There are always multiple variables in decision making. If our leaders aren't looking big picture, it is the responsibility of the press to make sure that the people understand this.
I agree that no one is above scrutiny. I believe that Glenn Greenwald has said that his readers should hold him to the same standards as they would hold any journalist, which is admirable.
Related to your point about the reliability of reporting in different fields, I think the New York Times is a case in point. They are clearly biased in favor of Democrats, and much of their "news" is propaganda (often propaganda by omission), but they also have some excellent investigative journalism and interesting articles on science, the arts, and other fields.
That's a great example. The New York Times does have some excellent investigative journalists, but I think we would agree that they days when a story had credibility simply because it was in the New York Times is long gone.
I do agree with you, and I think it's a shame that we cannot trust major newspapers to try to be accurate and fair in whatever stories they choose to report on.
actually, the "other" sections are even more woke than the op-ed page. Just try looking for last night's scores in the NCAA tournament... you'll more likely find articles about sexist weight rooms and unpaid labor issues.
I don't read about sports, so I can't comment on the NY Times' coverage of that topic. In the areas I mentioned, I don't think there's usually any particular political bias in evidence.
I don't go there. I don't seek out information from places I know I can't trust. They could be telling some great truth in a great article but they've lied so much how could I know? I only go to information providers that I identify as at least trying to get things right and tell the truth.
The problem with The Intercept is that they still have some great journalists who still do great work. With all the editorial problems caution is advised, but guys like Fang and Scahill, and a few others, still do vital journalism.
But don't you miss the articles about Peter Handke? Every two weeks - like a clockwork - there was another hilarious outrage cry how Peter (a "Milosevic apologist") got a Literature Nobel Prize! It was so entertaining, better that even the Onion :-)
For the last 17 years I have run a small manufacturing company. I design the products and am largely responsible for their production and marketing. I guess I am fortunate that I never acquired a liberal arts degree (or any other degree), because when I have problems with my customers or my sales I make the effort to find out what is wrong and do what I can to rectify the issues. I certainly don't sit around blaming the industry in which I work.
I never had any student loans, either.
I guess I'm just privileged to have never spent much time in college, a rite of passage that seems to have completely fucked up the values of many of the elite one quarter of Americans who possess a degree. Or maybe it was something else . . .
America's colleges started being strongly infected with socialism during the period right after WWII. The infection became a systemic disease beginning with the anti-war movement of the 60's and 70's. Here's what happened:
“The threat of Hitler’s Germany drove the Frankfurt School (of Socialism) out of Europe and into the welcoming arms of America’s left-wing colleges. Most to all of the leading practitioners…and their Institute came to New York City, specifically to the campus of Columbia University, already a hotbed of communism.
Pleading the case for them at Columbia was John Dewey, founding father of American public education, progressive fool, and communist sympathizer. Thus, their primary area of operation would be the educational system — the schools, the universities, and particularly the teachers’ colleges. It was no coincidence that Columbia housed the nation’s top teachers’ college — a creation of John Dewey.
From there, the cultural Marxists spread their ideas to campuses nationwide. Their insane notions would sweep up the ’60s New Left, to which the likes of Herbert Marcuse became an ideological guru to the radicals who today are tenured at our universities.”
Excerpt from: The Ways of This World by Paul Kengor, Professor of Political Science at Grove City College in The American Spectator, May 4, 2018
The teenagers in college in the 1960's and 70's became the teachers of today's colleges and universities. That's what happened to America. A few little seeds were planted and they yielded a huge crop of weeks! See Jesus's comment on this all end up...Matthew 13:24-30.
Baby-boomer liberals are not socialists or communists. They vote for Democrats, who vehemently oppose universal health care, adamantly support predatory U.S. foreign policy, etc. They may have had "socialist" leanings in their youth, but the grew older and wealthier, and their viewpoint changed. Youthful enthusiasms often give way to a desire for comfort and security.
It depends on WHEN you'd have gone to college, liberal arts or not. I graduated college in 79, and law school in 82. NONE of the crap going on now was prevalent. There were a few kooks around who were ignored by almost everyone. Now they're running the asylum. Education then did what it was supposed to do. Provide you with a wealth of new ideas and experiences, and giving you the tools to think for yourself. I don't have kids, but I worry so much about my grand niece's and nephews, and the future they face.
Yes, the "liberal" class has for several decades been drifting further and further toward intolerance, closed-mindedness, and contempt for anyone who does not share their worldview in its entirety. It's been disturbing to witness. Perhaps younger generations are different, though in many ways they seem to be even more subject to authoritarian thinking.
No you are onto something. The universities are predominantly intellectual cess pools. It’s four years of collectivism indoctrination and venom-dripping-from the-mouth-hatred for anything remotely associated with someone like yourself being productive (how dare you) and independent of the collective (how dare you). Not to mention economic thinking *lower* than that of five year olds.
It’s in the business schools as well so it isn’t limited to liberal arts.
Is it their college degrees that's a problem, or the values they have adopted? I was in a small group discussing a certain topic, not important, and during a break 3 of us remained. The other 2 were doctors, and were bemoaning the fact they made a lot less money then their colleagues that were in private practice, and both felt like failures. Almost in unison they told me that I must really feel like a failure being a teacher, because I made so little money. No, I said, I taught kids biology and taught them to value the living world, etc, so no I didn't feel like a failure. I then said one would think they went into medicine to help people, and yet they are solely concerned about money, and in my book that makes them failures. Maybe some, maybe many, go into journalism and initially have high minded values, but things change. Ambition begins to drive them, and too often becomes their first priority, truth be damned.
Hey, now, I resent this mudslinging at holders of liberal arts degrees or other degrees. I've got two of them but haven't managed to become elite yet. It's never too late, however, to grease some elite palms palms at some elite institutions.
What does your going to college or not going have to do with Glenn's article on the prostitution of journalism? Maybe if you had a more well rounded education, you might have been able to make a comment in near proximity to the content of the article. Perhaps you should borrow some money and go back to school. Interest rates are rising, so perhaps you should lock in now.
Simply because it is clear to me the twisted values presented here and in many of Glenns's other articles about the American media (this is the context) are being learned in college. The lunacy Glenn describes on Substack has been visible for decades in academia, and we all laughed about it then. Once it moved off campus and became entrenched in newsrooms across the media it wasn't so funny any more, was it?
I've done very well for myself without having gone to school, thanks. Believe it or not, I absorbed many of the values that enabled and shaped my future success at a series of entry-level jobs when I was a teenager, a step I notice is these days avoided by the expensively-degreed elites. If I did want to go back to school (the only conceivable reason would be to get a credential to teach in my state), I wouldn't need to borrow any money.
In fact, I also learned a long time ago (outside of college) to avoid debt whenever possible. My reluctance to borrow was one reason I never got a student loan and so could not afford to continue college. I guess that preconception served me pretty well, too, in the end.
You protest too much. I am guessing we mostly agree, but your aversions to debt and education have nothing to do with the self-immolation of the media. Post-modernist critical theory in the late '50's and '60's gave rise to the idea that there are no facts, which federal student loan guarantees then whored out to the masses by enabling academia to hire ten incompetent administrators to every single competent professor (see how I am bringing this back around to your debt allergy, which I kind of agree with you on). We all need more education, not less.
Seems as though Trump was right: The election was rigged. Would Trump have won the election if this story had been properly reported? I don't know but it seems quite possible. Before everyone piles on, I am not a Republican or conservative, not a Trump supporter, and-why this is necessary- but, not a right-wing nationalist or white supremacist. (I am very sad that I feel the need to insert that last sentence.)
The crazy thing is immediately after the elections were over TIME puts out an article bragging about how they successfully rigged the elections - just like ‘delusional’ Trump said they were: “The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election”. And people don’t see a problem with that? They call that democracy?!
Your characterization of the Time article doesn't seem accurate. The article, by Molly Ball (February 4, 2021, linked below), claims the following motivation for the conspiracy:
"The handshake between business and labor was just one component of a vast, cross-partisan campaign to protect the election–an extraordinary shadow effort dedicated not to winning the vote but to ensuring it would be free and fair, credible and uncorrupted."
The author also writes: "They were not rigging the election; they were fortifying it."
In the author's view, the conspiracy was not one that used illegal or unethical tactics for nefarious motives, but one that used legal and ethically justifiable methods.
Note that I'm not claiming that I share Ms. Ball's opinion, and I didn't read much of the article. I'm merely pointing out that it's not accurate to say that Time bragged about "rigging" the election in the usual sense of the phrase "to rig an election".
"They were not rigging the election; they were fortifying it."
"Fortifying" is a propaganda term. Propaganda is the art and science of shaping perceptions. Language comprises the arsenal of propaganda. Words are weapons.
That’s just the part they are openly admitting to. What else much bigger stuff did they not admit to?
Also I will believe in Santa Claus before I believe Biden got 81 million real votes, 12 million more than Obama (hate the dude but he at least was popular).
I couldn’t agree more. No way this past election wasn’t rigged by the Democratic machine! They got surprised in 2016. It’s never going to happen again! Why bother to vote?!? Just get in line and take the crumbs you’re given.
My reply to Daniela Ferreira was specifically about her characterization of the claims made in the Time article, not a judgment of the attempts by Democrats (or Republicans) to influence the election. One might claim to have illegitimately influenced an election, or one might claim to have legitimately influenced an election, for what one believes is a noble cause. Those are two different kinds of claims. The Time article makes the second kind of claim (whether or not it's sincere or accurate), while the phrase "bragged about how they successfully rigged the election" implies the second kind of claim (in my opinion). That's what I was commenting on. Personally, it's clear to me that both major parties are willing to use illegitimate means to get their way.
Democrats accused Donald Trump of inciting violence when he told the people at a rally to go to the Capitol to peacefully protest. They claimed that he was being disingenuous and really meant that they should violently protest.
The claim that Molly Ball's article brags about "rigging" the election similarly ascribes hidden meaning to words that, on the face of it, contradict that claim.
I don't know whether Molly Ball is sincere or deceptive, but her article, taken at face value, does not brag about "rigging" the election. To claim it does is to misuse language. If someone wants to show that her words cannot be taken at face value because she's proven herself in the past to be disingenuous, that would be a different kind of claim.
I straight up felt like every word was bragging when I read it. “In a way, Trump was right. There was a conspiracy unfolding behind the scenes, one that both curtailed the protests and coordinated the resistance from CEOs. Both surprises were the result of an informal alliance between left-wing activists and business titans.”
From Axios:
“That's the message being sent by a broad coalition of CEOs who are silencing Trump and punishing his acolytes in Congress.”
“CEOs have long put themselves forward as the people able to upgrade America's physical infrastructure. Now it's time for them to use the trust they've built up to help rebuild our civic infrastructure.”
“ Reversing the decline (of our trust in MSM) is a monster task — and one that some journalists and news organizations have taken upon themselves. They're going to need help — perhaps from America's CEOs.
I didn't claim I supported the actions described in the Time article (in fact, I don't). I simply pointed out that the author claimed that the actions were legitimately done in defense of democracy. There's a difference between someone openly stating that they "rigged" an election in the usual sense of that term and their saying that they worked to ensure that the election was fair.
Of course, each person can judge for themselves whether or not the author was being sincere and whether the actors in question were sincere. I suspect that the author probably was sincere, as most Democrats I know sincerely believe that they are always doing the right thing. Again, that doesn't mean I agree with her (I don't).
Molly Ball reported on events and secret collaborations that many people would consider as "rigging the election," though Ball did not characterize it that way herself.
That's fair enough, but that doesn't contradict my point that it's a misrepresentation to say that the article brags about rigging the election. That phrasing implies that the article itself represents the Democrats' actions as "rigging the election", which isn't true.
I replied to Daniela Ferreira's comment because I think it's important to try to accurately characterize what others say and write, regardless of what one thinks of the person or their opinions. I felt the same way when mainstream liberal media would mischaracterize something Donald Trump had said, as they often did, even though I viewed him as a reprehensible individual and an incompetent president.
A more important question, in my opinion, is whether Democrats did in fact "rig" the election. It's clear that both major parties are willing to rig elections in their favor - recall Hillary Clinton and the DNC undermining Bernie Sanders' candidacy in the 2016 elections (to avoid misunderstanding, I am not implying that I supported Sanders), or consider gerrymandering and voter suppression laws used in some Republican-run states.
I don't believe there was widespread electoral fraud, but after reading through the court decisions regarding Republican claims of illegitimate election policies in Pennsylvania and Georgia, it became clear to me that the media's insistence that all the Republicans' claims were entirely without merit was simply not true. There is evidence that some of the changes to state election laws that allowed increased voter participation were in violation of state constitutions, and in fact the courts' rejections of the lawsuits were not based on denying the truth of those claims. This issue was neatly swept under the rug, despite the fact that it should be of concern to everyone who values fair elections. On the other hand, it was also clear that the Republicans who brought the lawsuits would throw anything they could think of at the court in hopes that it would stick, for purely partisan reasons.
Yes. I wasn't arguing against you; just supplementing your point with my two cents. I am most troubled by the media manipulation. Trump...is a thing of the past, but the problem with the media and the election integrity (and the appearance thereof) will certainly come up again every 2-4 years.
Even though "journalists" on both sides engage in propaganda, I am more weary of the left because, presently, the left also dominates information technology, education, and entertainment.
Dominance in tech grants the power of censorship and de-platforming. Dominance in education and entertainment grants influence over the minds of the young. Dominance in higher education grants unequal control in industries that require professional training and licensure (law, healthcare, STEM, etc).
I worry about the concentration of power into one faction of society.
One could say that many things killed Trump's campaign. Remember, he only lost by a few thousand votes in AZ, GA, MI, WI, PA, etc..
If the COVID had not happened, Trump would have probably cruised to victory. (We can argue later about the extent to which the COVID exposed Trump's incompetence.)
If Trump had managed COVID slightly better, or at least appeared to be doing so, he probably could have picked up enough of those states to get the win.
If Trump had made an effort to enact his agenda in the first place, he also might well have won.
If Big Tech and the MSM were not openly campaigning for Biden, that *might* also have been enough for Trump to win (*or not* - I wonder how many people were turned off by the obvious glaring partisan bias. It certainly turned me off.)
If Trump had behaved a little less like a jackass in public, he may have not turned off some voters that otherwise would have voted for him.
**Some assembly required. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Contains forward-looking statements. Offer void where prohibited. This is not an offer to buy or sell securities. Your mileage may vary. Not a Trump supporter, white supremacist, right-wing nationalist, etc..**
You are right. It’s my believe that the river of Trump supporters (all 74 million) we saw rallying across this land scared the crap out of the DC politicians. For me his biggest accomplishment was not to get us into another war and, at least tried to bring the troops home - for that alone I gave him my vote! it is wrong to go around the world destroying lives, families, cities and to be honest I have no doubt Trump won the election. In this BIden administration, many people just start lining their pockets again with cash from destruction and, the business of killing is up and running. His press secretary is blatant lying without any accountability and, purging on our civil liberties keeps ongoing. Sadly The World has no decent leader at the moment and seriously what’s wrong with some of us that just accept this crap
Zuckerberg and wife donated $419M to left wing “non profits” which then gave out the money to local election districts, but with many string attached. Claw back provisions which required the districts to run the elections as stated or return the money. The privatization of US election law, no more or less.
Included in the provisions: hiring poll workers under the direction of advisers from these non profits (vs. the old model of using volunteers), putting thousands of drop off boxes in likely Democratic leaning neighborhoods (percapita ratios of boxes in urban vs rural areas was over 50 to 1 in PA), centralizing vote counting in large arenas/convention centers (enhancing the feasibility of the coordinated shutdown, if that’s what it was), lowering standards for addresses and signatures on mail in ballots ( the cynical would say “easier to mass produce bogus ballots”, like the ones reportedly seen by the affidavit signing witnesses).
This is he story I believe the Time article was attempting to “get ahead of”.
Indeed. Instead of anyone else accusing them of not being democratic they spin it to some great sacrifice they made for us to have democracy. Trump, the dictator who wasn’t allowed to bring troops back home or give us recurring relief checks or even just one w/ his name on it, had to be corralled lest we don’t even have elections anymore. All these secretive powers had to unite behind all our backs and silence every one of us that didn’t oblige, including the sitting president! Cause you know, democracy!
Election complaints should always have focused more on the media. International observers, and the US State Dept, often point out how manipulation of and by the media in other countries can taint elections.
I do not believe his campaign was doomed. And no, I am not his fan either as he didn’t pardon Assange, Snowden etc. But I do believe he won. After all that I have researched and seen, I cannot be convinced that Biden got 81 million real votes, 12 million more than Obama.
Trump bungled the Covid message., that's it. (But he bungled it pretty bad.) In any event, it gave the #resistance and the media a yellow brick road to frame it as they did. This episode was a perfect example of how a population can be manipulated into *truly* believing a false narrative if it serves their window on the world. And I mean, they truly believe it ... or at least the many such people I have talked to. Against plain evidence, they seem to have no honest doubt that many fewer would have died, had Trump not been in office. They wouldn't have voted for Trump anyway but I do think it swayed a lot of seniors, who might have voted for Trump, to vote for Biden.
Glenn has finally (at least since the last couple of years ;p) said something I disagree with: "Indeed, when anyone, including journalists, loses their job, it is lamentable." Nope. It is incredibly pleasing and wonderful when these liars finally are held somewhat accountable and lose their jobs.
I’m not sure that the ones truly responsible are paying the price. The restaurant critic may be losing his job while the biggest, fattest lying careerists are still smugly thriving, and the owners of these rags still collect a profit.
Yes, it is. I like seeing arrogant NYT and WaPo and the skinny jeans wearin, ballerina bun wearin, virtue signalling (wooo!), electric scooter ridin, rooftop cocktail partying crowd get forced to "learn code". It's already happened to me.
The game and the players at this point are so obvious it’s amazing anyone even listens. To see President Swalwell last night in his black mask pushing yet another “Russia collusion” narrative on MSNBC was surreal. This is the Ben Rhodes echo chamber on steroids. Totally nuts.
Does anyone know what role that little liar, Ben Rhodes, will be rewarded in the Harris regime? I haven’t heard his slimy name mentioned anywhere and that concerns me because whatever he is up to it is a danger to all of us.
I’m so sorry but I have no sympathy for these awful journalists losing their jobs. I would lose my job if I was this willfully wrong. So tired of all the lies. Good riddance.
Well...as the doomed Frog, I'd really have to at least have a little confidence
that Mr Scorpion could a least try and go against his 'nature'.
But seeing this mindless, yet productive "Russia did it again" narrative propped up on Twister.. I guess that Mr. Putin ..er Mr. "killer" has a couple more reptilian "intelligence"
I will wait until we nearly reach the other shore before I sting you. But that is just so that I can walk onto dry land while you drown in the shallows.
But isn't that what all standard-issue "scorpions" say when it suits their purpose of why they have to sting some poor hapless frog that's only trying to help them get across the river?
Full frog disclosure here: I really can't swim either!
Typo at the end of para 2, Glenn, highlighted - should be "through":
"In response, Twitter banned the posting of any links to that reporting and locked The Post out of its Twitter account for close to two weeks, while Facebook, ******though****** a long-time Democratic operative, announced that it would algorithmically suppress the reporting."
Maybe the media scolds are right and Substack does need ten layers of editors to be considered journalism, after all... :)
No, in all seriousness, another timely and important piece. I'm one of the people who was, well, normal until a few years ago - I'd listen when the NYT dropped a major story, I'd instinctively put on CNN if there was something major happening, I'd say "well the major networks all say X" if I wanted to back something up. (This was *after* the Iraq War, by the way. What can I say? I'm a slow learner.) But now? I genuinely don't believe anymore that there's a single adult in the room at any of the major organs who has the slightest trace of concern for the truth. None whatsoever. It's get the narrative out there and, if needed, maybe do a bit of clean-up later.
And I can't decide if it's the dishonesty or the stenography that's more depressing.
Similar here, though for me Iraq was definitely the turning point: once I witnessed the monolithic Pravda-like manufacturing of consent for the invasion on the part of the entirety of the US msm (with anyone who as much as dared ask a question or challenge the official narrative being summarily silenced/smeared/removed from the town square), it was impossible for me to unsee it.
Why are we looking at Russia for yet unproven claims of election interference when we have the smoking gun on our own media and former intelligence officials having committed verifiable election interference. Mind boggling.
40% (YES!) still believe there was Russian collusion. They know their audience. Idiots. If you know people who get all their news from Facebook it's like an alternate universe. News ticker for the brain dead.
Many well-educated Dems with verifiably high IQs now believe Russia is evil personified. They have to. Don't forget Obama going put of his way to say Putin was in charge of a "3rd rate country" Killary talking smack, and now Biden saying he is just repeating the "You have no soul" comment from his VP days.
My 2 sibs and I are all "gifted" indivs. One is a National Merit Scholar, the other Commended. I am slowly persuading the Scholar that Democrips and Rebloodicans all hate common Americans. Strangely, most Russians don't hate Putin. Why would they when US estabs are constantly trashing their country?
While the power centers in our federal government (elected and unelected) have always lied to the public for various self-serving reasons, the check on those lies was historically a critical press, who were liberals in the true sense. In our current environment, nearly all of the liberals in media have been either marginalized, canceled or converted to the new version of liberal, which is progressive/woke.
The surviving journalists must serve their new religion, which is the far-left progressive/woke movement. Actual truth that is inconsistent with their poetic truth must be sacrificed on the alter of their new religion. They are now committed to the modern day inquisition, and they serve as the foot soldiers of the inquisition - converting or canceling all in their path.
These new progressive/woke journalists have made a Faustian Bargain with the unelected power centers within the federal government, particularly those in the “intelligence community”. And, one can’t really differentiate between current and former intelligence community “experts” as it is a revolving door between running the DOJ, FBI, CIA etc. and cushy private sector deals. Today’s former head of the CIA (who is always a CNN or MSNBC contributor) will be tomorrow’s actual head of the CIA. Further, the leadership of these agencies is a cabal that manufactures and leaks a constant torrent of self-serving lies.
But, let’s get back to the Faustian Bargain. The progressive/woke journalists want to advance their narrative and the intelligence community experts want to maintain their power and influence. So, as long as these current and former intelligence community experts continue to manufacture and then leak(always anonymously) a constant stream of lies that support the progressive/woke narrative, they will stay in power and/or have cushy “contributor” gigs. Further, they are allowed to run their agencies as corruptly as they wish with no concern that their corruption will be reported by any major national media source.
The result of all this corruption is that increasingly the only Americans who believe either the national media or their govt. are the far-left progressives. The obvious problem with this development is that a democratic republic cannot survive in an environment where the citizenry trusts neither their govt. nor their media.
No one has the intestinal fortitude to call what is going on with the Left/ Democrats:
This is evil incarnate, it’s only when they actively start killing Americans will people suddenly wake up and realize, the Left and Democrats only relentlessly hate humanity and freedom, and you’re all going to be so busy endlessly cowering and kneeling, you’re all going to be dead before you realize that that pressure point against your temple is a gun barrel…
How am I supposed to get any work done when you keep writing articles inevitably followed by (mostly) excellent commentary from other acolytes?
I heard this sloppily reported "story" on NPR this morning, and wondered how long it would take to be debunked . . . Ha! Less than 12 hours! I believe that's a record.
Conservative Media usually catches these lies immediately and they usually get it from a non media conservative source, AKA, conspiracy theorist on Twatter. But so much effort has been put into discrediting these patriots that the story immediately devolves into a fight between Left/Right media personalities while the actually true story is ignored or obliquely mentioned. I have seen this exact scenario play out dozens of times.
Divide and conquer.
I have caught so many lies at NPR that i just walked away- back to my music
Another (very frigging) impressive chronicling of a large amount of information on the media deception occurring.
No doubt the timing (late October near the election) exposed many alleged “standards” or ethical standards of journalism to be complete and utter BS. Half of the country was willing to lie or promote lies or be complicit in lies to change an election outcome. And willing to censor anyone and anything.
It worked.
They were going to steal the election regardless. They even told us they were going to do it. No honest reporting on a Biden scandal could ever compete with literal truck loads of Biden only ballots delivered in the dead of the night in the swing states.
Intuitively speaking, one would have to be a zombie to not expect that what your saying about the ballots is probably true to some extent or some variation. Clearly this was going to be a DNC victory come hell or high water. Personally I suspect the CIA was involved in the whole capitol riot BS, although I obviously concede I have no direct evidence. I have a fair amount of objectivity because I didn’t especially like DJT or his policies.
Yet court after court basically concluded there was no evidence of what you are asserting. Are you just surmising this (like myself) or do you believe there is direct evidence?
That’s not what the courts said. No court ever heard any evidence. SCOTUS couldn’t even grow the balls to hear such important cases. If you have a moment, read Justice Clarence Thomas dissent on SCOTUS refusing to hear the Pennsylvania case from couple weeks ago. He covers it very well.
Courts magically always discover “no standing” whenever they don’t want to take a case. Absolute cowards and a menace to society.
This is why trump supporters were and are rightfully outraged- no court even gave them the respect to hear out the evidence. Why would anyone trust such a court system?
Most courts, if not all, ruled "no standing", not "no evidence".
I’m not disputing that, since I did not follow it closely. But are you saying they never reached the point of looking at evidence? Because the suits lacked standing?
Unless I am mistaken they did hear evidence and concluded it was circumstantial or insufficient to conclude it had a material effect on the election.
Lack of standing, or no jurisdiction or no "material effect"... Sort like ignoring evidence of fraud because the election is over, which is kind of like ignoring a murder because the victim is already dead.
This is false information, and an astoundingly bad analogy. From one of Trump's appointees - "“Free, fair elections are the lifeblood of our democracy,” wrote Judge Stephanos Bibas, who was appointed to the court by Mr. Trump. “Charges of unfairness are serious. But calling an election unfair does not make it so. Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here.”
Does that sound like "ignoring the results because an election is over"? Gtfo with that dishonest BS. I wish he won too, but you can wish in one hand and shit in the other, and neither one changes the reality that Trump didn't lose because of voter fraud. Media fraud, maybe.
That’s not what no standing means
I continue to come back to the original question- where is the evidence?
Sworn affidavits of what? I mean you could have 10,000 sworn affidavits and they could be truthful but that in and of itself doesn’t mean anything.
I still have yet to see a single shred of actual evidence. One would think if it was that compelling, those filing the various suits would have by now made it publicly available.
There was a great deal of evidence available; evidence means nothing until it is examined and cross-examined. Then it can become proof. Most claims of "no evidence" really are claims of "no proof," which is correct. It cannot become roof until examined, and none has been permitted to be examined. The fix was in long ago, and there is nothing we can do about it.
And then there is this....
https://thefederalist.com/2021/03/17/medias-entire-georgia-narrative-is-fraudulent-not-just-the-fabricated-trump-quotes/
New info today from JusttheNews. The site is run by a legit, decorated, journo, John Solomon. He simply is on the "wrong side" nowadays with his mildly right-biased viewpoint. Like Sharyl Attkisson, his reporting is legit and sources are trustworthy, he just has the traditional normal slight bias of topic selection and outlook, comparable to what the MSM had for decades before they went off the rails.
Anyway, he's reporting on this: https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/elections/thumonths-after-trump-complaints-some-courts-are-finding-illegalities
Yes, that's generally right. For example, Maricopa County (AZ) simply fought the AZ State Senate's attempt to subpoena their computer equipment for inspection. By the time the Senate could have gotten access to actually take a look, according to our election rules the state would have to certify the results.
All of it basically takes the form of Bush-Gore 2000: we can't figure it out in a fair way in time, so let's just stop where we are.
Here's a (highly imperfect) breakdown: https://thefederalist.com/2021/03/11/courts-repeatedly-refused-to-consider-trumps-election-claims-on-the-merits/
Just so the misinformation doesn't continue to spread, I'll repost for you what I posted in response to the OP elsewhere, from one of his own links - "judges, lawyers, and other observers described the suits as "frivolous"[4] and "without merit".
Trump's own judicial appointments said things like - “Charges of unfairness are serious. But calling an election unfair does not make it so. Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here.”
I voted for Trump twice btw. Don't fall for the partisan hype like OP and others did.
What the fuck does it matter if someone "described" something as frivolous? You can describe shit to someone however you want. Im sure Harvey Weinstein described his accusers as "full of shit" that didn't make it so.
FOH!
I never voted for Trump, and care more about fair elections than any candidate. And you're whitewashing it too much. For example, in Wisconsin, the SC vote was 4-3 with four GOP-appointed judges and three Dem-appointed. The one GOP judge who voted against, ending the case, explicitly said that there might be a case on the merits, but it would have had to have been brought in Oct 2020 before the election. He explicitly decided at least a major part of the case (regarding allowing late ballots I think) on laches (not acting soon enough), not merits. Plus see the links I sent below about where status of many cases is.
I despise both “parties” and the probability of me falling for partisan hype is precisely 0%.
I watched at least 40 hours of different state election fraud hearings from which not one single sworn affidavit(don’t know the proper noun for that) from a poll worker alleging fraud has been charged with perjury. Real ballot audits have been fought tooth and nail in Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, Wisconsin and Michigan. Judges are beginning to allow real audits to take place and judges are finally starting to admit election process changes were unlawful although little is to nothing is being done as it relates to the 202 election.
More will be coming out slowly and will continue to be ignored by the MSM. It happened. The Time story admitted how they did it. It will happen again. Democrats are passing laws making every election fraud tactic they used legal going forward.
Both sides stretch the law to help their side. The Democrat ballot harvesting is no more "fraud" than the republican gerrymandering. There were no ballot dumps of all Biden ballots. Perjury is incredibly common but trials are so incredibly rare as to be statistically non-existant. Saying no one has been tried for perjury is irrelevant.
Since when do Democrats not redraw district lines when they are in power?
Is ballot chain of custody is a joke to you?
Oh they try, they just aren't nearly as effective at it on the whole. This isn't a partisan position, it's fact.
You don’t think a politicized judicial system which has spent the last 5 years going after everyone remotely connected to Trump would have easily gone after one of the thousands of signed affidavits if they could prove they lied on the affidavit? C’mon dude. Signed affidavits are literal court admissible.
More than what Christine blasey Ford even had.
How do you "prove" someone lied when they say they saw ballots being double-counted? Or *say* they saw anything? It's not a question of provable facts, never has been. And no, I don't think they're going to convince an AG in East bumfuck, PA to go after every, or any, random pollwatcher grandma, as readily as they'll be able to deputize a minion in the DC swamp to go after Mannafort or Stone. Not even close.
The first jury also found the Rodney King police innocent. Who the fuck ever thinks lawyers or the courts get it right every time?
The entire legal system is a joke designed to protect those in power anyways.
Ballot tabulating machines that can print ballots in order to achieve a goal-seeked result. In the manual. America's elections are designed for corrupt outcomes.
You mean, like where a DNC election official just walks into the voting booth and pulls the lever repeatedly because a DNC candidate paid him to?
Weird we didn't hear about this during the "election stuff".
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/former-philadelphia-judge-elections-convicted-conspiring-violate-civil-rights-and-bribery
Mike Lindell tell you this? He heard it from someone who read the hammer and scorecard book with 5 star reviews on Amazon, so it must be true!
What OP stated is straight out of the Voting machine manual which can be read on secretary of states websites. I researched this myself and read it.
And no, I am not a fan of mike lindell or Sidney Powell. I think Sidney made the situation worse by taking attention away from real cases and putting them on crazy theories.
Did a quick search, the actual wording is "expected results", and it's a test mode. Printed ballots are randomly generated (not programmable), then checked to confirm correct operation before voting even starts. USA Today is certainly biased but the check here seems pretty airtight - https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.usatoday.com/amp/3973030001
Your non-stop defense of fraud and of anything any Democrat ever did is getting old. The media fraud was real; the conspiracy was real, as Time magazine proudly boasted. Your argument that the people who benefited from all of it, and who refuse to allow any closer look at what happened, are without sin does not pass the laugh test.
Try reading the rest of the thread before you make an ass of yourself next time, Bill Heath. The post I was responding to is objectively, demonstrably false. but here you come in on your white horse to save the day to defend another half baked conspiracy theory. Mr "anti-fraud"! And you say I don't pass the laugh test? Break out a mirror, pal. Who do you think you're fooling?
As someone who wasn't in your little two person argument, you come off terribly here "justin".
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/former-philadelphia-judge-elections-convicted-conspiring-violate-civil-rights-and-bribery
I suppose that conviction is fake too? How are things over at the Brock social media machine these days?
Yea, 2014! You sure showed me, Einstein.
Almost like in 2014 the party that was in power didn't care. What party had the President in 2014? Oh right the racist politician hanging out with anti-semite Louis Farrakhan.
Have you read the manual?
Yes. As I wrote below it's very clearly referring to a test setting. It explicitly says the ballots are RANDOM, which is useless for controlling an outcome. The manual wording is "expected" results, not "goal seeking" or whatever. As in, the machine generates random ballots, stores the results in internal memory, counts the ballots it just printed, and compares the results against the stored, "expected" results to ensure internal integrity.
I mean, just on the face of it, you really think if they were goin to make the machines able to control the outcome of an election, they'd write it in the manual? C'mon my man...
Am I the only one that finds it incredible he sells that many pillows?
Especially at that price 😲
Thank you. It’s a crazy business model
Dewey defeats Truman. Still relevant 75+ years later because the crooks never left politics.
Not exactly. The election was stolen.
I'd say that ALL of the country was willing to take chances in order to win the election.
U wot m8? Talk about a non-sequitur.
For now...
I posted a similar comment today at Taibbi’s piece today, but will repeat the point here.
I think it’s near or maybe past time honest journalists like Greenwald, Taibbi and the handful of others (across the political spectrum) who still do look for evidence and cite to it in their reporting, stop paying attention to and analyzing the lies of the liars in the mainstream media and on Twitter and Facebook.
In a perverse way, highlighting their lies and how they cover for each other seems to be feeding the beast, when starving it might well be more effective at building the spaces and audiences for the truth tellers.
There is a massive audience that completely tunes out the liars, and (as part of that audience) I’d like to hear less about the liars, and more about the substantive things that coverage of the liars is stealing attention from.
I guess I just think the people who want to believe the lies will continue to believe them no matter how many times the lies are pointed out to them, and the rest of us already know the liars lie, ignore them as much as we can, seek out truth-tellers, and want to move past the liars and let them rot in their own disgusting juices in their echo chambers of irrelevancy together.
Plus I think it would be super-funny if Taibbi, Greenwald, and the handful of others more or less simultaneously announced that they’re done with media-liar-coverage and actually stopped following the liars antics on social media and in the pages of the WaPo and New York Times and HuffPost and the Atlantic and so on.
Maybe I’m totally wrong, but I think the people who care about the inbred liberal media types and their circle-jerks of lies are a tiny minority, and a very large majority is hungry for whatever is not that.
I was thinking something similar the other day. Maybe ignoring them and not saying their names will decrease the incentive to lie like many suggest doing with serial killers(that comparison is applicable).
But then I thought - someone with integrity and credibility has to chronicle our nation’s collapse so GG is one of the only ones qualified to do that job.
I do also wonder what scandals and stories they are spiking. Conservative media, at least the ones that can be trusted, catch a lot of them which is why so much effort is put into discrediting the Conservative media as an institution. I have read so much fake news over the least several years that I can catch what is misleading. But that talent took a lot of reading, cynicism and open mindedness which this content is explicitly meant to diminish. Apparently enough people are learning how to do this that the media has begun to tell us not to do that! That gives me hope.
The vast majority of the political and corporate class in this country has not yet been woken up to the falsehoods perpetrated by the mainstream media. Thus, while I often feel the same as you, I think it's vital that people like Greenwald and Taibbi continue documenting the evidence upholding traditional journalistic standards. That kind of reporting won't be outright dismissed quite as easily by those still hypnotized by mainstream media, and may occasionally break through. There should be more people documenting this clearly and carefully.
Also, crazy how nobody mentions the fact that the Biden laptop emails were authenticated using DKIM signatures.
My point is that’s the vast majority of that insider class will not change their minds, because they are in on the long con and benefitting from it.
Course correction will not come from that cohort. It will be up to the outsiders who currently ignore the propaganda machines and are ignored by the MSM but have very limited good alternative sources (Greenwald, Taibbi, etc.) with which to learn about each other and ideas that might have potential to make useful change.
Adding to the growing pile of evidence that the outsiders are correct in their contempt for the overlords is less helpful at moving things along, in my view, than putting the time now spent documenting the insiders’ MSM corruption than putting that time into documenting other things, about what the outsiders are doing to fight back or create alternatives , for example, that’s ignored by MSM.
Maybe the outsiders aren’t doing anything so there’s nothing to report and MSM ignorance of the lowly peasants is justifiable.
Or maybe the lowly peasants are more interested in secrecy for their resistance movements than growing by attracting new recruits, so they avoid talking to any media, alternative or MSM.
I don’t know. I just know more attention slathered on MSM assholes by really good reporters seems like a tragic waste of the reporters’ time and their readers’ time.
Maybe I just need to skip reading those pieces. But sometimes it seems like it takes up 25-30% of their time and energy, and it’s sad to think about what else that time and energy could be put into, and how those other things could be more effective toward changing things for the better.
I absolutely agree. Many have simply turn off news media altogether. Disgusted by falsehood and contradictions from liberal to conservative outlets, making it an endeavor to get to the truth. In Twitter, I follow some journalists with proven integrity. But being capable of impartial assessment is going out of style replaced by “I feel”.
Great comment, however I think this is a type of Renaissance moment, hopefully, and that a lot more people, sheeple, are starting to realize the level of control that these media conglomerates carry over them. I do agree and think that more substantive pieces will come out, however this is possibly the most important shift in modern journalism, also I do truly enjoy watching these MSM hacks getting dragged to the literary woodshed.
I agree
I understand where you are coming from, and sometimes get tired of another article dealing with the topic, but I certainly don’t want to follow these people yet do like to know what lies or just crappy reporting is being passed around and believed. As others have mentioned as well, these articles (or the information they contain) are good for sharing with others we can hope might open their eyes. While I trust Glenn on these issues, depending on the topic, I’m still going to try to verify or get another view - but these articles help speed that process up a lot.
"Catalog the lies" of Corp Media, YES. it would be great to have access to an Exel Spreadsheet documenting ALL LIES, by Journalist, Media Outlet, Date, Link to Lie, Link to Info demonstrating it is a lie. Unfortunately those same people who tweet and retreat TWO SENTENCES worth of false info., are NOT gonna take the time nor will they have the interest to read a well thought out, well investigated piece of journalism as in Greenwald and others' articles. Sad but true
In fact it is doable, all what is needed a shrewd and interested programmer in Python to make such "dig, document and compile" spreadsheet.
It would be a great point of reference
I wondered about that rose thing today too, seeing it for the first time. It either indicates I’m a paying subscriber and the date I subscribed, or that I have my own SubStack, both of which are true.
It can mean you’re a super-subscriber, paying more than the basic subscription price, or a founding subscriber.
Let's see....test.
It's not founding.
I thought it denoted a “founding member”, but I joined that club not long ago and don’t have one. So no longer sure.
I was a late subscriber elsewhere just today, but paid for a higher subscription level and instantly got the rose.
Traitor! :)
I’m a slut, what can I say.
I don’t see a rose for you.
He means the other subscription
I thought that too. Maybe because your whole avatar is so red it wouldn't be seen ;)
Reckon this Breveland Clowns fan will have to give up hating on the Steelers.
Thankfully our current situation is so f’d I no longer need the clowns to remind me that life can be disappointing!
That the Intercept was part of suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story is painful for me. I had such high hopes that it would take the WikiLeaks work even further. But now it's a Deep State fakes factory, like much else of the Western MSM. I thought at one point they should stop calling themselves the Intercept, as governments here in the West have nothing to fear from them intercepting anything. Then I realized that the name still applies, as now they help Intercept truthful information about government actions from the public, who needs to know what these officials are doing now more than ever. Epic Fail.
Certainly not a popular view here, but I think there are still a lot of excellent journo's over at The Intercept: Ryan Grimm, Liliana Segura, Natasha Lennard, Lee Fang and others. I generally steer clear of any political reporting, but they continue to do great work on criminal reform, the surveillance state and corporate corruption that is barely covered by other outlets. Loosing Mr. Greenwald was a great loss, but there are other great journo's over there as well.
The problem isn't the quality of the journalists it's the editorial shackles now placed upon them. If bosses can violate the working agreement on editorial independence of a founding member what are they not allowing the remaining journalists to cover? Corporate corruption is only part of the story and is a branch of a rotten tree, the heart of which is centered on American violations of International Law, the bombings and overthrow of governments that Washington doesn't like and the control of information and mythical narratives which are aided by journalistic malpractice in hiding the details of who is doing what to whom.
I agree editorial bias is a risk, but so is journalistic bias and bias comes in many forms. I'm not certain having an editor make a bad call in one area means they will make a bad call on every topic.
The editor became a thing in journalism because it never hurts to have someone objective check your work. Sometimes editors make bad calls, or make decisions based on things we don't see. Some editors are terrible and should be doing something else.
Editorial review is not just top down, but can also be lateral. I have tremendous respect for Mr. Greewald. After his departure from The Intercept a journalist I enjoy reading complimented Mr. Greenwald and thanked him for bringing her to The Intercept, but also pointed out that he once asked her to kill a story on behalf of Betsy Reed. I don't know what the story was so cannot comment if it was a good or bad call, but people make editorial decisions for a host of reasons both good and bad and it's very domain dependent. An editor is capable of making excellent decisions on say criminal justice, or environmental coverage, but terrible decisions on their political coverage.
The corporate stuff is more nuanced and difficult to call, but if you have not read The Intercept's coverage on the Dakota Pipeline's and how it affects Indigenous people it's worth reading. You may agree or disagree with their coverage, but I don't sense corporate, or editorial bias in their reporting. They cover a series of corporate corruption stories where I feel they are credible, but I am always open to someone pointing out specifics on where they got it wrong and I should not trust them.
A format like Substack presents it's own challenge. Here we need to assume the writer is either excellent at detecting their own bias, or has an editor for their work we don't see. Either way, no one is above scrutiny. Not even a journalist I respect as much as Mr. Greewald.
I don't a
Nobody would suggest that Glenn or others on Substack don't have biases or make errors... the difference between these independents and the others is the fact that they let the facts interpret the story, not the story interpret the facts. It is obvious by now that much of the media only tells the story it believes its audience wants to hear, and frames it in a way that doesn't always include factual evidence.
The reporting on the Rub-n-Tug Murders in Atlanta, for instance. There is not one shred of evidence that the women killed in Atlanta were targeted out of Anti-Asian/White Supremacist hate... but that hasn't stopped NYT and WaPo from "flooding the zone" with exactly that narrative.
The fact that the Intercept is looking at the Dakota pipeline from the viewpoint of the "oppressed" tribes, rather than the cost/benefit analysis of many factors (union jobs, local economics, climate change tradeoffs - pipeline v. tanker) doesn't impress me. There are always multiple variables in decision making. If our leaders aren't looking big picture, it is the responsibility of the press to make sure that the people understand this.
I agree that no one is above scrutiny. I believe that Glenn Greenwald has said that his readers should hold him to the same standards as they would hold any journalist, which is admirable.
Related to your point about the reliability of reporting in different fields, I think the New York Times is a case in point. They are clearly biased in favor of Democrats, and much of their "news" is propaganda (often propaganda by omission), but they also have some excellent investigative journalism and interesting articles on science, the arts, and other fields.
That's a great example. The New York Times does have some excellent investigative journalists, but I think we would agree that they days when a story had credibility simply because it was in the New York Times is long gone.
I do agree with you, and I think it's a shame that we cannot trust major newspapers to try to be accurate and fair in whatever stories they choose to report on.
actually, the "other" sections are even more woke than the op-ed page. Just try looking for last night's scores in the NCAA tournament... you'll more likely find articles about sexist weight rooms and unpaid labor issues.
I don't read about sports, so I can't comment on the NY Times' coverage of that topic. In the areas I mentioned, I don't think there's usually any particular political bias in evidence.
I don't go there. I don't seek out information from places I know I can't trust. They could be telling some great truth in a great article but they've lied so much how could I know? I only go to information providers that I identify as at least trying to get things right and tell the truth.
The problem with The Intercept is that they still have some great journalists who still do great work. With all the editorial problems caution is advised, but guys like Fang and Scahill, and a few others, still do vital journalism.
But don't you miss the articles about Peter Handke? Every two weeks - like a clockwork - there was another hilarious outrage cry how Peter (a "Milosevic apologist") got a Literature Nobel Prize! It was so entertaining, better that even the Onion :-)
For the last 17 years I have run a small manufacturing company. I design the products and am largely responsible for their production and marketing. I guess I am fortunate that I never acquired a liberal arts degree (or any other degree), because when I have problems with my customers or my sales I make the effort to find out what is wrong and do what I can to rectify the issues. I certainly don't sit around blaming the industry in which I work.
I never had any student loans, either.
I guess I'm just privileged to have never spent much time in college, a rite of passage that seems to have completely fucked up the values of many of the elite one quarter of Americans who possess a degree. Or maybe it was something else . . .
America's colleges started being strongly infected with socialism during the period right after WWII. The infection became a systemic disease beginning with the anti-war movement of the 60's and 70's. Here's what happened:
“The threat of Hitler’s Germany drove the Frankfurt School (of Socialism) out of Europe and into the welcoming arms of America’s left-wing colleges. Most to all of the leading practitioners…and their Institute came to New York City, specifically to the campus of Columbia University, already a hotbed of communism.
Pleading the case for them at Columbia was John Dewey, founding father of American public education, progressive fool, and communist sympathizer. Thus, their primary area of operation would be the educational system — the schools, the universities, and particularly the teachers’ colleges. It was no coincidence that Columbia housed the nation’s top teachers’ college — a creation of John Dewey.
From there, the cultural Marxists spread their ideas to campuses nationwide. Their insane notions would sweep up the ’60s New Left, to which the likes of Herbert Marcuse became an ideological guru to the radicals who today are tenured at our universities.”
Excerpt from: The Ways of This World by Paul Kengor, Professor of Political Science at Grove City College in The American Spectator, May 4, 2018
The teenagers in college in the 1960's and 70's became the teachers of today's colleges and universities. That's what happened to America. A few little seeds were planted and they yielded a huge crop of weeks! See Jesus's comment on this all end up...Matthew 13:24-30.
Baby-boomer liberals are not socialists or communists. They vote for Democrats, who vehemently oppose universal health care, adamantly support predatory U.S. foreign policy, etc. They may have had "socialist" leanings in their youth, but the grew older and wealthier, and their viewpoint changed. Youthful enthusiasms often give way to a desire for comfort and security.
"That is because the dominant strain of American liberalism is not economic socialism but political authoritarianism."
https://greenwald.substack.com/p/how-silicon-valley-in-a-show-of-monopolistic
It depends on WHEN you'd have gone to college, liberal arts or not. I graduated college in 79, and law school in 82. NONE of the crap going on now was prevalent. There were a few kooks around who were ignored by almost everyone. Now they're running the asylum. Education then did what it was supposed to do. Provide you with a wealth of new ideas and experiences, and giving you the tools to think for yourself. I don't have kids, but I worry so much about my grand niece's and nephews, and the future they face.
Yes, the "liberal" class has for several decades been drifting further and further toward intolerance, closed-mindedness, and contempt for anyone who does not share their worldview in its entirety. It's been disturbing to witness. Perhaps younger generations are different, though in many ways they seem to be even more subject to authoritarian thinking.
Yup. An entire world on "social credit" is the best-case outcome, I think. Unfortunately.
No you are onto something. The universities are predominantly intellectual cess pools. It’s four years of collectivism indoctrination and venom-dripping-from the-mouth-hatred for anything remotely associated with someone like yourself being productive (how dare you) and independent of the collective (how dare you). Not to mention economic thinking *lower* than that of five year olds.
It’s in the business schools as well so it isn’t limited to liberal arts.
Is it their college degrees that's a problem, or the values they have adopted? I was in a small group discussing a certain topic, not important, and during a break 3 of us remained. The other 2 were doctors, and were bemoaning the fact they made a lot less money then their colleagues that were in private practice, and both felt like failures. Almost in unison they told me that I must really feel like a failure being a teacher, because I made so little money. No, I said, I taught kids biology and taught them to value the living world, etc, so no I didn't feel like a failure. I then said one would think they went into medicine to help people, and yet they are solely concerned about money, and in my book that makes them failures. Maybe some, maybe many, go into journalism and initially have high minded values, but things change. Ambition begins to drive them, and too often becomes their first priority, truth be damned.
Well said. The richest person is the one who makes a living doing what they love; feeling like they never had to work a day in their life.
Thanks Jeff.
Hey, now, I resent this mudslinging at holders of liberal arts degrees or other degrees. I've got two of them but haven't managed to become elite yet. It's never too late, however, to grease some elite palms palms at some elite institutions.
What does your going to college or not going have to do with Glenn's article on the prostitution of journalism? Maybe if you had a more well rounded education, you might have been able to make a comment in near proximity to the content of the article. Perhaps you should borrow some money and go back to school. Interest rates are rising, so perhaps you should lock in now.
You could have made a pro-education post without oozing douchebaggery.
Simply because it is clear to me the twisted values presented here and in many of Glenns's other articles about the American media (this is the context) are being learned in college. The lunacy Glenn describes on Substack has been visible for decades in academia, and we all laughed about it then. Once it moved off campus and became entrenched in newsrooms across the media it wasn't so funny any more, was it?
I've done very well for myself without having gone to school, thanks. Believe it or not, I absorbed many of the values that enabled and shaped my future success at a series of entry-level jobs when I was a teenager, a step I notice is these days avoided by the expensively-degreed elites. If I did want to go back to school (the only conceivable reason would be to get a credential to teach in my state), I wouldn't need to borrow any money.
In fact, I also learned a long time ago (outside of college) to avoid debt whenever possible. My reluctance to borrow was one reason I never got a student loan and so could not afford to continue college. I guess that preconception served me pretty well, too, in the end.
You protest too much. I am guessing we mostly agree, but your aversions to debt and education have nothing to do with the self-immolation of the media. Post-modernist critical theory in the late '50's and '60's gave rise to the idea that there are no facts, which federal student loan guarantees then whored out to the masses by enabling academia to hire ten incompetent administrators to every single competent professor (see how I am bringing this back around to your debt allergy, which I kind of agree with you on). We all need more education, not less.
Nope. That is definitely it and sadly, by design. I hope your business survives the current regime.
Seems as though Trump was right: The election was rigged. Would Trump have won the election if this story had been properly reported? I don't know but it seems quite possible. Before everyone piles on, I am not a Republican or conservative, not a Trump supporter, and-why this is necessary- but, not a right-wing nationalist or white supremacist. (I am very sad that I feel the need to insert that last sentence.)
The crazy thing is immediately after the elections were over TIME puts out an article bragging about how they successfully rigged the elections - just like ‘delusional’ Trump said they were: “The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election”. And people don’t see a problem with that? They call that democracy?!
I read the article. To be fair, what it describes can be summed up as "better organizing".
Your characterization of the Time article doesn't seem accurate. The article, by Molly Ball (February 4, 2021, linked below), claims the following motivation for the conspiracy:
"The handshake between business and labor was just one component of a vast, cross-partisan campaign to protect the election–an extraordinary shadow effort dedicated not to winning the vote but to ensuring it would be free and fair, credible and uncorrupted."
The author also writes: "They were not rigging the election; they were fortifying it."
https://time.com/5936036/secret-2020-election-campaign/
In the author's view, the conspiracy was not one that used illegal or unethical tactics for nefarious motives, but one that used legal and ethically justifiable methods.
Note that I'm not claiming that I share Ms. Ball's opinion, and I didn't read much of the article. I'm merely pointing out that it's not accurate to say that Time bragged about "rigging" the election in the usual sense of the phrase "to rig an election".
"They were not rigging the election; they were fortifying it."
"Fortifying" is a propaganda term. Propaganda is the art and science of shaping perceptions. Language comprises the arsenal of propaganda. Words are weapons.
That’s just the part they are openly admitting to. What else much bigger stuff did they not admit to?
Also I will believe in Santa Claus before I believe Biden got 81 million real votes, 12 million more than Obama (hate the dude but he at least was popular).
I couldn’t agree more. No way this past election wasn’t rigged by the Democratic machine! They got surprised in 2016. It’s never going to happen again! Why bother to vote?!? Just get in line and take the crumbs you’re given.
My reply to Daniela Ferreira was specifically about her characterization of the claims made in the Time article, not a judgment of the attempts by Democrats (or Republicans) to influence the election. One might claim to have illegitimately influenced an election, or one might claim to have legitimately influenced an election, for what one believes is a noble cause. Those are two different kinds of claims. The Time article makes the second kind of claim (whether or not it's sincere or accurate), while the phrase "bragged about how they successfully rigged the election" implies the second kind of claim (in my opinion). That's what I was commenting on. Personally, it's clear to me that both major parties are willing to use illegitimate means to get their way.
From https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/rig:
1 : to manipulate or control usually by deceptive or dishonest means rig an election
2 : to fix in advance for a desired result rig the contest
"They were not rigging the election; they were fortifying it." is the most blatant use of doublespeak I can think of.
Democrats accused Donald Trump of inciting violence when he told the people at a rally to go to the Capitol to peacefully protest. They claimed that he was being disingenuous and really meant that they should violently protest.
The claim that Molly Ball's article brags about "rigging" the election similarly ascribes hidden meaning to words that, on the face of it, contradict that claim.
I don't know whether Molly Ball is sincere or deceptive, but her article, taken at face value, does not brag about "rigging" the election. To claim it does is to misuse language. If someone wants to show that her words cannot be taken at face value because she's proven herself in the past to be disingenuous, that would be a different kind of claim.
Right, they call it "fortifying" the election to ensure the proper outcome is achieved.
Some of call that rigging. If you don't that's cool.
You seem to think I'm defending Molly Ball's point of view. I'm not. My comment had nothing to do with my personal political opinions.
I straight up felt like every word was bragging when I read it. “In a way, Trump was right. There was a conspiracy unfolding behind the scenes, one that both curtailed the protests and coordinated the resistance from CEOs. Both surprises were the result of an informal alliance between left-wing activists and business titans.”
From Axios:
“That's the message being sent by a broad coalition of CEOs who are silencing Trump and punishing his acolytes in Congress.”
“CEOs have long put themselves forward as the people able to upgrade America's physical infrastructure. Now it's time for them to use the trust they've built up to help rebuild our civic infrastructure.”
“ Reversing the decline (of our trust in MSM) is a monster task — and one that some journalists and news organizations have taken upon themselves. They're going to need help — perhaps from America's CEOs.
https://www.axios.com/ceos-fourth-branch-government-trump-7eee851f-0027-4bfa-a2c0-58ec254e2dbe.html
https://www.axios.com/media-trust-crisis-2bf0ec1c-00c0-4901-9069-e26b21c283a9.html
See the problem? I do!
I definitely do. The problem odd THAT IS NOT DEMOCRACY!
I didn't claim I supported the actions described in the Time article (in fact, I don't). I simply pointed out that the author claimed that the actions were legitimately done in defense of democracy. There's a difference between someone openly stating that they "rigged" an election in the usual sense of that term and their saying that they worked to ensure that the election was fair.
Of course, each person can judge for themselves whether or not the author was being sincere and whether the actors in question were sincere. I suspect that the author probably was sincere, as most Democrats I know sincerely believe that they are always doing the right thing. Again, that doesn't mean I agree with her (I don't).
Molly Ball reported on events and secret collaborations that many people would consider as "rigging the election," though Ball did not characterize it that way herself.
That's fair enough, but that doesn't contradict my point that it's a misrepresentation to say that the article brags about rigging the election. That phrasing implies that the article itself represents the Democrats' actions as "rigging the election", which isn't true.
I replied to Daniela Ferreira's comment because I think it's important to try to accurately characterize what others say and write, regardless of what one thinks of the person or their opinions. I felt the same way when mainstream liberal media would mischaracterize something Donald Trump had said, as they often did, even though I viewed him as a reprehensible individual and an incompetent president.
A more important question, in my opinion, is whether Democrats did in fact "rig" the election. It's clear that both major parties are willing to rig elections in their favor - recall Hillary Clinton and the DNC undermining Bernie Sanders' candidacy in the 2016 elections (to avoid misunderstanding, I am not implying that I supported Sanders), or consider gerrymandering and voter suppression laws used in some Republican-run states.
I don't believe there was widespread electoral fraud, but after reading through the court decisions regarding Republican claims of illegitimate election policies in Pennsylvania and Georgia, it became clear to me that the media's insistence that all the Republicans' claims were entirely without merit was simply not true. There is evidence that some of the changes to state election laws that allowed increased voter participation were in violation of state constitutions, and in fact the courts' rejections of the lawsuits were not based on denying the truth of those claims. This issue was neatly swept under the rug, despite the fact that it should be of concern to everyone who values fair elections. On the other hand, it was also clear that the Republicans who brought the lawsuits would throw anything they could think of at the court in hopes that it would stick, for purely partisan reasons.
Yes. I wasn't arguing against you; just supplementing your point with my two cents. I am most troubled by the media manipulation. Trump...is a thing of the past, but the problem with the media and the election integrity (and the appearance thereof) will certainly come up again every 2-4 years.
Even though "journalists" on both sides engage in propaganda, I am more weary of the left because, presently, the left also dominates information technology, education, and entertainment.
Dominance in tech grants the power of censorship and de-platforming. Dominance in education and entertainment grants influence over the minds of the young. Dominance in higher education grants unequal control in industries that require professional training and licensure (law, healthcare, STEM, etc).
I worry about the concentration of power into one faction of society.
I think the points you made are very important, and I share your concern.
You're right, it wasn't bragging.
It was straight up wanking.
One could say that many things killed Trump's campaign. Remember, he only lost by a few thousand votes in AZ, GA, MI, WI, PA, etc..
If the COVID had not happened, Trump would have probably cruised to victory. (We can argue later about the extent to which the COVID exposed Trump's incompetence.)
If Trump had managed COVID slightly better, or at least appeared to be doing so, he probably could have picked up enough of those states to get the win.
If Trump had made an effort to enact his agenda in the first place, he also might well have won.
If Big Tech and the MSM were not openly campaigning for Biden, that *might* also have been enough for Trump to win (*or not* - I wonder how many people were turned off by the obvious glaring partisan bias. It certainly turned me off.)
If Trump had behaved a little less like a jackass in public, he may have not turned off some voters that otherwise would have voted for him.
**Some assembly required. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Contains forward-looking statements. Offer void where prohibited. This is not an offer to buy or sell securities. Your mileage may vary. Not a Trump supporter, white supremacist, right-wing nationalist, etc..**
“If Trump had behaved a little less like a jackass in public, he may have not turned off some voters that otherwise would have voted for him.“
There you go. Nice post.
The funny part is that other presidents are considered great, for doing much worse, but being charismatic and eloquent about it. Priorities I guess!
You are right. It’s my believe that the river of Trump supporters (all 74 million) we saw rallying across this land scared the crap out of the DC politicians. For me his biggest accomplishment was not to get us into another war and, at least tried to bring the troops home - for that alone I gave him my vote! it is wrong to go around the world destroying lives, families, cities and to be honest I have no doubt Trump won the election. In this BIden administration, many people just start lining their pockets again with cash from destruction and, the business of killing is up and running. His press secretary is blatant lying without any accountability and, purging on our civil liberties keeps ongoing. Sadly The World has no decent leader at the moment and seriously what’s wrong with some of us that just accept this crap
Zuckerberg and wife donated $419M to left wing “non profits” which then gave out the money to local election districts, but with many string attached. Claw back provisions which required the districts to run the elections as stated or return the money. The privatization of US election law, no more or less.
Included in the provisions: hiring poll workers under the direction of advisers from these non profits (vs. the old model of using volunteers), putting thousands of drop off boxes in likely Democratic leaning neighborhoods (percapita ratios of boxes in urban vs rural areas was over 50 to 1 in PA), centralizing vote counting in large arenas/convention centers (enhancing the feasibility of the coordinated shutdown, if that’s what it was), lowering standards for addresses and signatures on mail in ballots ( the cynical would say “easier to mass produce bogus ballots”, like the ones reportedly seen by the affidavit signing witnesses).
This is he story I believe the Time article was attempting to “get ahead of”.
Indeed. Instead of anyone else accusing them of not being democratic they spin it to some great sacrifice they made for us to have democracy. Trump, the dictator who wasn’t allowed to bring troops back home or give us recurring relief checks or even just one w/ his name on it, had to be corralled lest we don’t even have elections anymore. All these secretive powers had to unite behind all our backs and silence every one of us that didn’t oblige, including the sitting president! Cause you know, democracy!
Election complaints should always have focused more on the media. International observers, and the US State Dept, often point out how manipulation of and by the media in other countries can taint elections.
Ahhh. But not in the free and fair USA.
I do not believe his campaign was doomed. And no, I am not his fan either as he didn’t pardon Assange, Snowden etc. But I do believe he won. After all that I have researched and seen, I cannot be convinced that Biden got 81 million real votes, 12 million more than Obama.
Trump bungled the Covid message., that's it. (But he bungled it pretty bad.) In any event, it gave the #resistance and the media a yellow brick road to frame it as they did. This episode was a perfect example of how a population can be manipulated into *truly* believing a false narrative if it serves their window on the world. And I mean, they truly believe it ... or at least the many such people I have talked to. Against plain evidence, they seem to have no honest doubt that many fewer would have died, had Trump not been in office. They wouldn't have voted for Trump anyway but I do think it swayed a lot of seniors, who might have voted for Trump, to vote for Biden.
Glenn has finally (at least since the last couple of years ;p) said something I disagree with: "Indeed, when anyone, including journalists, loses their job, it is lamentable." Nope. It is incredibly pleasing and wonderful when these liars finally are held somewhat accountable and lose their jobs.
I’m not sure that the ones truly responsible are paying the price. The restaurant critic may be losing his job while the biggest, fattest lying careerists are still smugly thriving, and the owners of these rags still collect a profit.
The owners don't need a profit because they are using the media as a PR team.
For all I know, I’m one of the owners. NYT is mostly owned by mutual funds and institutional investors. I expect others are publicly held as well.
Bingo.
Exactly, which is to say not at all.
The loss Bezos takes from owning the Post is basically an advertising/PR budget for him.
Daily reminder: Bezos bought WaPo for $300M the day after he signed a deal with the CIA for $600M.
Yes, it is. I like seeing arrogant NYT and WaPo and the skinny jeans wearin, ballerina bun wearin, virtue signalling (wooo!), electric scooter ridin, rooftop cocktail partying crowd get forced to "learn code". It's already happened to me.
The game and the players at this point are so obvious it’s amazing anyone even listens. To see President Swalwell last night in his black mask pushing yet another “Russia collusion” narrative on MSNBC was surreal. This is the Ben Rhodes echo chamber on steroids. Totally nuts.
Does anyone know what role that little liar, Ben Rhodes, will be rewarded in the Harris regime? I haven’t heard his slimy name mentioned anywhere and that concerns me because whatever he is up to it is a danger to all of us.
I’m so sorry but I have no sympathy for these awful journalists losing their jobs. I would lose my job if I was this willfully wrong. So tired of all the lies. Good riddance.
Can you blame the CIA for taking advantage of what have to be some of the dumbest and most deranged people on the planet?
That’s like asking the scorpion to not honor his nature whilst crossing the river.
As a scorpion, I endorse this message.
Well...as the doomed Frog, I'd really have to at least have a little confidence
that Mr Scorpion could a least try and go against his 'nature'.
But seeing this mindless, yet productive "Russia did it again" narrative propped up on Twister.. I guess that Mr. Putin ..er Mr. "killer" has a couple more reptilian "intelligence"
costa-nostra's he's yet to sting.
I will wait until we nearly reach the other shore before I sting you. But that is just so that I can walk onto dry land while you drown in the shallows.
So the infamous story goes....But what if this Mr "Killer" awaits you on the other side and successfully "overturns" your stinging stories outcome?
I'm just a scorpion. I'm not concerned with possible outcomes.
But isn't that what all standard-issue "scorpions" say when it suits their purpose of why they have to sting some poor hapless frog that's only trying to help them get across the river?
Full frog disclosure here: I really can't swim either!
Yes.
Isn’t there a quote or something from the cia which states along the lines of “our job will be complete when everything the people believe is false”?
Read this:
https://www.quora.com/Did-CIA-Director-William-Casey-really-say-Well-know-our-disinformation-program-is-complete-when-everything-the-American-public-believes-is-false
Typo at the end of para 2, Glenn, highlighted - should be "through":
"In response, Twitter banned the posting of any links to that reporting and locked The Post out of its Twitter account for close to two weeks, while Facebook, ******though****** a long-time Democratic operative, announced that it would algorithmically suppress the reporting."
Maybe the media scolds are right and Substack does need ten layers of editors to be considered journalism, after all... :)
No, in all seriousness, another timely and important piece. I'm one of the people who was, well, normal until a few years ago - I'd listen when the NYT dropped a major story, I'd instinctively put on CNN if there was something major happening, I'd say "well the major networks all say X" if I wanted to back something up. (This was *after* the Iraq War, by the way. What can I say? I'm a slow learner.) But now? I genuinely don't believe anymore that there's a single adult in the room at any of the major organs who has the slightest trace of concern for the truth. None whatsoever. It's get the narrative out there and, if needed, maybe do a bit of clean-up later.
And I can't decide if it's the dishonesty or the stenography that's more depressing.
Similar here, though for me Iraq was definitely the turning point: once I witnessed the monolithic Pravda-like manufacturing of consent for the invasion on the part of the entirety of the US msm (with anyone who as much as dared ask a question or challenge the official narrative being summarily silenced/smeared/removed from the town square), it was impossible for me to unsee it.
Chinese idiom "The thief shouted for the thief". This is the best description to China Biden / Democrat / Leftist Media. They are liars and traitors.
IDK. these labels are difficult to define. For instance, where does Google fit on this left/right continuum?
Why are we looking at Russia for yet unproven claims of election interference when we have the smoking gun on our own media and former intelligence officials having committed verifiable election interference. Mind boggling.
And don’t forget big tech. They literally interfered in the elections and nobody is getting held accountable.
Russia is just a boogeyman just like “white supremacist” boogeyman.
Bingo. IIlegal campaign contributions.
40% (YES!) still believe there was Russian collusion. They know their audience. Idiots. If you know people who get all their news from Facebook it's like an alternate universe. News ticker for the brain dead.
Many well-educated Dems with verifiably high IQs now believe Russia is evil personified. They have to. Don't forget Obama going put of his way to say Putin was in charge of a "3rd rate country" Killary talking smack, and now Biden saying he is just repeating the "You have no soul" comment from his VP days.
My 2 sibs and I are all "gifted" indivs. One is a National Merit Scholar, the other Commended. I am slowly persuading the Scholar that Democrips and Rebloodicans all hate common Americans. Strangely, most Russians don't hate Putin. Why would they when US estabs are constantly trashing their country?
By the way, it is hard to find Obama's very negative comments online now. It was reported in foreign press.
The world as it is is vexing enough.
While the power centers in our federal government (elected and unelected) have always lied to the public for various self-serving reasons, the check on those lies was historically a critical press, who were liberals in the true sense. In our current environment, nearly all of the liberals in media have been either marginalized, canceled or converted to the new version of liberal, which is progressive/woke.
The surviving journalists must serve their new religion, which is the far-left progressive/woke movement. Actual truth that is inconsistent with their poetic truth must be sacrificed on the alter of their new religion. They are now committed to the modern day inquisition, and they serve as the foot soldiers of the inquisition - converting or canceling all in their path.
These new progressive/woke journalists have made a Faustian Bargain with the unelected power centers within the federal government, particularly those in the “intelligence community”. And, one can’t really differentiate between current and former intelligence community “experts” as it is a revolving door between running the DOJ, FBI, CIA etc. and cushy private sector deals. Today’s former head of the CIA (who is always a CNN or MSNBC contributor) will be tomorrow’s actual head of the CIA. Further, the leadership of these agencies is a cabal that manufactures and leaks a constant torrent of self-serving lies.
But, let’s get back to the Faustian Bargain. The progressive/woke journalists want to advance their narrative and the intelligence community experts want to maintain their power and influence. So, as long as these current and former intelligence community experts continue to manufacture and then leak(always anonymously) a constant stream of lies that support the progressive/woke narrative, they will stay in power and/or have cushy “contributor” gigs. Further, they are allowed to run their agencies as corruptly as they wish with no concern that their corruption will be reported by any major national media source.
The result of all this corruption is that increasingly the only Americans who believe either the national media or their govt. are the far-left progressives. The obvious problem with this development is that a democratic republic cannot survive in an environment where the citizenry trusts neither their govt. nor their media.
We haven't truly been a democratic republic for decades so no worries about "surviving"!.
No one has the intestinal fortitude to call what is going on with the Left/ Democrats:
This is evil incarnate, it’s only when they actively start killing Americans will people suddenly wake up and realize, the Left and Democrats only relentlessly hate humanity and freedom, and you’re all going to be so busy endlessly cowering and kneeling, you’re all going to be dead before you realize that that pressure point against your temple is a gun barrel…
Those people are not left, their polices have nothing to do with left leaning polices. Look at their polices at tell me which one is left?
Here we go again.
The policies they shill for are already getting Americans killed and they are just getting warmed up.
Sad but true.