Home » Open thread 10/29/2024

Comments

Open thread 10/29/2024 — 48 Comments

  1. From Mollie Hemingway — An actual news story about the (false) news production industry with actual new news in it!: https://thefederalist.com/2024/10/29/jake-tapper-is-lying-about-cnns-key-role-in-the-russia-collusion-hoax/

    Before I tell you what happened next, I need to explain why I’ve never told this story publicly before. During commercial breaks and while remote reporters are on air, people on television sets share personal stories, funny jokes, and information about stories they’re working on. I have long treated on-set interactions that are not broadcast as not to be discussed.

    But in the same way that a reporter can publicly disclose an anonymous source who burns them with bad information, Tapper and CNN are causing serious harm to the country with their revisionist history of their own key role in the Russia collusion hoax. It’s become a matter of conscience that I stop hiding what I witnessed at CNN.

  2. Of course Jake Tapper’s lying. Again and again and again.

    (Alas, for “the Faithful”, it’s a “righteous” lie. Ad infinitum. Ad nauseum…and so—alas, once again—a higher truth.)

  3. as thanos said ‘it must be like breathing for him’ my memory of tapper goes back to 2000, its fascinating actually distressing how they never call out their source but it goes back to woodward ‘you know that brave patriot, who risked all to speak truth to power, he was just a passed over bureaucrat, who did watergate type things for lunch and dinner,

    what type of flower is that, similar with everyone of these ‘scandals’ that turn out to be less than meet the eye, rather’s fake documents, the tell tale memo about enron that proved nothing,

  4. Maybe there is some kind of virus going around….

    Jeff Bezos is making noises that sound a lot like “coming clean”:

    https://legalinsurrection.com/2024/10/washington-post-owner-jeff-bezos-endorsements-create-a-perception-of-bias/comment-page-1/#comment-1587577

    Not that the legacy media has been perceived as biased…. but it goes beyond mere perception to many. “Late to the party”, some are trying to look good (or at least better) before the voters speak.

    Bezos, Tapper…. who is next?

  5. They’re scared.
    For two major reasons:
    – Financially (as has already been mentioned in previous discussions).
    – They believe their own buffalo-scheiss about Trump coming after them should he actually become the next president. (AKA “guilt”? Hmmm, not sure.)

    Those jokers are hedging their bets, IOW.

    BUT it’s far too late for that…and if Harris “wins” they’ll heave a collective sigh of relief, mutter “Phew, THAT was a close call”, and get back to the business of being the Pravda-like fish-wrap wannabes they’ve been for the past umpteen years.

  6. all of these papers are terrible, gannett tribune Carlos Slims, Bezos, they have made a cave with extra thick walls, re Plato

    when is the last time that the Post had a real scoop, snowden back in 2013, everything else are leaks, with little recourse to first hand documents, they studiously avoided the Clinton emails

    they presented at best a very partial perspective of the ‘summer of ruin’ which devastated 50-100 cities, and they made a mountain out of the January 6th molehill, leaving out nearly all of the documentary record, whole forests have been
    cut down, and they have not even scratched the surface of the story, as for the origins of covid, the methodology of it’s spread, well they have been out to lunch

  7. The fact that WaPo has been suffering a huge number of subscription cancellations due to the non-endorsement should be pretty revealing about the mindset of so many of their liberal subscribers. Clearly these are people who aren’t looking for objective news reporting out of their newspapers. They don’t want non-endorsements or anything like the general appearence of neutrality. These are people who willfully prefer propaganda. They simply want they’re biases confirmed and are angry enough to cancel their subscription when they don’t get what they want the way they want it. That’s the behavior of a devote religious person who is angry over an interpretation of doctrine that they disagree with, as opposed to a person just desires basic facts.

  8. Bezos is moving more of his wealth to his rocket company. He relocated to Florida to escape the WA bullshit unconstitutional capital gains tax that targeted him. IIRC that saved him about $600m for his rockets. So maybe “the sleeper has awakened”.

  9. It seems unlikley to me that Kamala could truly be capabale of having an open conversation similar to the one that Trump had with Rogan. She seems unable to make it through even the friendliest, heavily staged and curated interactions without devolving into a cringe inducing responses and word salads. And at this point I suspect everyone knows this.

  10. I didn’t find the Bezos editorial evidence of any sort of change of heart, or change of direction for the the Post. He’s doing the typical Dem thing of saying “we need better messaging”. He’s not taking any accountability for the Post’s egregious bias in what should be straight news reporting. He wants to tone down the editorial section so the egregiously biased straight news goes down with the public more easily, that’s all.

  11. naw I don’t think so, blue origin isn’t remotely a rocket company, it’s like a drive around the block and back, thats false advertising, imho

    there is something about democratic pols, that is so singleminded, that they don’t act like normal people, the crazy woman yelling at a child, for no good reason, is a derivative example,i
    it seems to be part of their chronic child hatred, so it appears, change my mind

  12. As for Bezos, he’s obviously aware that a majority of people largely don’t really trust the WaPo. For him at this point the problem isn’t that the paper isn’t profitable or even that he cares about reporting the truth. The problem is that propaganda is only effective if/when people actually consume it, otherwise you’re just setting money on fire for no reason. So he has to try to convince at least some consumers that the paper isn’t just hugely biased fantasy and propaganda. Of course, letting a handful of Conservatives write some opinion pieces really doesn’t change any of the actual bovine excrement being generated eveywhere else, but that’s not the point.

  13. John Stossel highlights how the media treats conservatives and liberal/leftists differently. Of course it’s preaching to the choir, but you can share it with your liberal friends.
    Probably won’t make a difference, since liberal/leftists largely support censoring/banning ‘misinformation’ which seems to be defined as lies spouted by conservatives.

    Media Bias: Subtle (and Not So Subtle) Ways Journalists Slant the News
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7voF2YTBeb8

  14. These are people who willfully prefer propaganda. They simply want they’re biases confirmed… — Nonapod, 11:15

    That’s my experience here in Blueland too. In my past, I rubbed elbows with a large number of extremely smart people, and even then I wondered if some of that deep thinking seeping into their political thinking. Answer: not so much.

    Now, my friends are mostly about having fun. But they are reasonably smart, for the most part. In spite of that, they seem to prefer the more stupid, ad-hominem attack assertions in their politics. It really is like a big group hug, in the form of a 1-minute hate.

    However, I have met people who say that have no conservative friends or relatives. I know about 6 conservatives, and another several who are slight acquaintances. So maybe my California enclave is not sooo blue. A number of us pals have commented on how our community is like a largish small town. Possibly, that’s a factor.

  15. miguel cervantes,
    I think that is an unfair characterization of Blue Origin. And Bezos has gotten the stink eye from Seattle before so maybe like Musk, he is learning leftist loyalty is a millimeter deep.

  16. I call them the way i see them, maybe bezos finds hes in the stew pot but i would need more to prove that

  17. Oklahoma has an interesting election issue – a group decided to run ads suggesting that the three OK Supreme Court justices who are up for retention votes be removed from office. The main reason is that they are liberal. Of course, you can’t find party affiliation for judges, but you can guess from who appointed them. And, if you wanted to read some opinions online, you may be able to figure out what is going on.

    So, I did some research – one person is 87 years old and has been on the OK supreme court for 40 years! The second one is 79 years old and been on the court for 21 years. And his family has all been involved in democratic politics (governor, Atty Gen’l, etc) The third is only 72 years old and has been on the Supreme Court for 13 years. She was nominated by governors of both parties to various judicial positions and seems the least political in nature.

    So, I will probably vote no on the first two and yes on the third. Reason – the position is for an additional six years and it would help to get some younger people on the court. Isn’t that the reason that Ds talk about the US Supreme Court?

    Regardless of what happens, this opens up for future ad campaign against judges.

  18. Megan Kelly confronts the unforced errors the Trump campaign made during the otherwise incredible MSG rally.

    This close to the election, other than Trump (who may or may not stay on script) everything at the rally should have been vetted and every word said on stage should have been OK’d.

    My wife and I watched most of the consequential speeches and much of Trump’s speech and she noted the coarse language used. Even that should have been cleaned up.

    I think it was JD Vance that tried some damage control the next day, pointing out the George Lopez at a Harris rally making the same kind of jokes– but he was countered by the interviewer that it was a Hispanic making fun of his ethnicity. That was not the case of the “comic” at the Trump rally.

    While it has become the rule never to admit a mistake in politics, and we can point out that the crowd wasn’t receptive to Hinchcliffe’s trash remark and boo’ed him. Hinchcliffe even remarked that he wasn’t used to following the national anthem. So even though Trump’s audience didn’t like the particular joke, it has overshadowed the event– which is why the media so closely follows Trump– to report on any faults, not on his message for the American people.

    Trump’s Massive MSG Rally Overshadowed by Warm-Up Comedian’s Act? With Bevan, Cannon, Walworth
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzU3h32X2H8

  19. Seven years later! They havent cleaned up the debris from puerto rico they still havent fixed the electrical grid the shadow senator from puerto rico is endorsing trump just another squirrel! They have let loose

    Meanwhile in bucks county ‘voter protection details’ are deterring voters from voting

    Let me tell you about george lopez he divorced his wife after she gave him a kidney this is who they consider a worthy surrogate

  20. @Bauxite: The media will always find something to criticize Trump for. The articles about how the MSG rally was Nazi and racist were written up before the event. It simply does not matter who says what, the media will invent it if necessary. They did it just a month ago with J. D. Vance and couch cushions, did you forget? They did it to Romney and McCain and too many GOP politicians to mention.

    And you already know this, and we already know this. (I’m pretty sure you weren’t frozen in 1984 and are waking up just now.) I am really not seeing what you are trying to persuade people to when you keep saying this. It sounds like you just want us all to blame Trump for the loss in November and then go back to the GOP establishment.

    But if that’s what you hope will happen, that ain’t happening. It’s not 1984. Republican voters are different people and the country club set and the National Topsider crowd do not represent them.

    We’ve figured out that many of them never did, like Liz Cheney with her volte-face on abortion:

    2019: “The fact that we’re even debating it is so appalling. It’s pure evil.”

    2024: “There are many of us around the country who have been pro-life, but who have watched what’s going on in our states since the Dobbs decision and have watched state legislatures put in place laws that are resulting in women not getting the care they need.”

    Trump didn’t use Jedi mind tricks to make Liz Cheney do that. That’s who she was all along, and she dropped the mask. She’s not the only one, and Republican voters are not sheep who haven’t noticed.

  21. Ah thats a shame her first role i think was on the trek episode with robert lansing

    Thats a classic film i think they ran it last week on movies or tcm

  22. It is a real shame that the perpetrators of the Russia / Trump collusion hoax and those in the media that ran with this phony baloney BS will not meet the same fate as Mr. and Mrs. Ceausescu.

  23. Remember: the Left’s unhinged apocalyptic rhetoric is not just the progressive fools projecting their fascist fantasies – it is also the hard core, ruthless warriors building the justification for violent revolution after the elections, and ginning up the crazies.

    Lefties never just shrug and say “OK you won, here’s the football.”

    There will be violence after a Trump victory.

  24. Re: Terri Garr

    Yes, she is immortal for her role in “Young Frankestein” — somewhere in my top ten. She was perfect too as the neurotic waitress with the beehive hairdo in Scorcese’s “Äfter Hours.”

    –“After Hours (1985) | You’re Mine”
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cj67U4t9B1c

    I didn’t know she had been battling multiple sclerosis since the early 2000s.

    RIP

  25. There will be violence after a Trump victory.

    BenDavid:

    To be sure.

    Though I worry more about the Deep State and some sort of “Seven Days In May” scenario to prevent Trump from taking office.
    _____________________________________

    Seven Days in May is a 1964 American political thriller film about a military-political cabal’s planned takeover of the United States government

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Days_in_May
    _____________________________________

    Still quite a movie with a stacked cast.

  26. Remember the crux of the plot was the president was going to sign a treaty that was considered by the chairman of the joint staffs the exercise was called econcom the pretext was a card game involving the senior staff including the cno

    The basis for the operation was some loose talk fletcher knebel had heard this was told by third parties general lemays resistance to kennedy administration directives as well as general lemnitzer were referred to

    How true this might have been well operation northwoods suggests such a possibility but thats probably a stretch some thirty years later they remade it (horrors) with jason robards and forest whitaker

  27. Niketas Choniates – I’m not sure why your comment was addressed to me. My only other comment on this thread was an NR link suggesting that Bezos and the LAT owner are signalling that he won’t be part of the “resistance” should Trump win.

    But I’ll take up your point anyway. The answer is “yes, and.” Are the Democrats and media (but I repeat myself) out to destroy Trump and his campaign by any means, fair or foul? Yes, absolutely. Is Trump and/or the people running his campaign total idiots to run their MSG rally the way that they did. Yes, yes they are. Are Trump and/or his team good for at least one massive “own goal” like this about every week. Why yes, yes they are. If Trump wins, we’ll be dealing with this kind of idiocy from both Democrats/Media/Deep State and from Trump and his entourage for four years. Yippee.

    (Addendum – I really like JD Vance. I really hate watching him destroy his credibility trying to defend this nonsense. If he runs for President again, this stuff will run in a loop on Democrat’s attack ads, just as the Kamala stuff does now for Trump.)

  28. @Bauxite:Niketas Choniates – I’m not sure why your comment was addressed to me.

    Because I read it wrong. I am sorry. It was a comment by Brian E and I mixed it up with yours. That was wrong and careless of me. I will be more careful in the future. I got caught up in personalities, which I try not to do and have certainly criticized other people for.

    I hope you will accept my apology. I don’t think I have a way to delete that comment, but perhaps it’s better it stay there to rebuke me later.

  29. Eva Brann, adieu blessed teacher.

    sdferr:

    If you’ve got a story or two, I’d love to hear.

  30. “The media will always find something to criticize Trump for. The articles about how the MSG rally was Nazi and racist were written up before the event. It simply does not matter who says what, the media will invent it if necessary.”-Niketas Choniates

    All the more reason the performers shouldn’t muck up the event. Given his reputation, his routine should have been reviewed– which the campaign said didn’t happen. The Trump campaign has hundreds/thousands of people so it wouldn’t be surprising if a few moles are among the staff. It would be interesting to know who suggested him to the campaign.

    Mistakes are inevitable– but the closer we are to the election the less time to recover. Trump needs the Puerto Rican vote in Pennsylvania and this doesn’t help. Philadelphia has the second highest Puerto Rican population with 140,000 in the country behind New York City. A million Puerto Ricans live in the swing states.

    Depending on the circumstances, someone should get their walking papers.

  31. I’ve seen a couple of responses to the jokes about Puerto Rico that show some people don’t regard them as the End of the Trump Campaign as We Know It.

    One is by a Puerto Rican woman, and one is by Jon Stewart.
    Not for the same reasons, obviously.

    https://notthebee.com/article/trumps-nyc-rally-had-a-diverse-sea-of-patriotic-americans-heres-how-the-lamestream-media-covered-it

    Read the whole thing, it’s funny, with pictures. This is the relevant part:
    “The problem is, Puerto Ricans actually got the joke:”

    These are the Links:
    https://x.com/Kelly4Humanity/status/1850764971069911552
    Christy Kelly @Kelly4Humanity
    Do we really need to explain the Puerto Rico joke?
    (which she does: he was referring to the massive pollution on the beaches)

    https://x.com/BehizyTweets/status/1850703800555995479
    George @BehizyTweets
    BREAKING: Puerto Ricans who attended Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally say they had ZERO problem with the joke Comedian Tony Hinchcliffe made on stage.
    “Do you guys even give a — about that?”
    Them: “No, we don’t… Puerto Ricans for Trump.”
    Only white liberals are mad about a freaking JOKE.

    https://notthebee.com/article/i-find-that-guy-really-funny-john-stewart-has-a-message-for-the-lefties-who-forgot-how-to-laugh

    Jon Stewart made the comments on his Monday show, which can be found in full here.

    I appreciate that he still has the capacity to laugh and doesn’t want to censor comedy, but … well … he helped usher in the woke killjoys who can’t tolerate anyone who thinks differently than them, so he shouldn’t be surprised.

    I love this little jab at Kamala Harris though:
    [AF: I added the lead-in to Stewart’s quoted remark]

    Bringing him to a rally and having him not do roast jokes —
    That’d be like bringing Beyoncé to a rally and not having … oh.

    The Stewart video:
    https://x.com/EndWokeness/status/1851138132596408499

  32. @ Chases Eagles > “He relocated to Florida to escape the WA bullshit unconstitutional capital gains tax that targeted him. IIRC that saved him about $600m for his rockets. So maybe “the sleeper has awakened”.”

    He could be like Elon Musk, who moved operations from California to Texas for economic as well as ideological reasons, and stands by the ideological principles.

    Or he could be like many Democrats, who vote for people who enact policies that hit them, move to places with different policies on that issue, and immediately start electing the kind of people who enacted the policies they ran away from, because they don’t realize it’s a Package Deal with Democrats.

  33. @ sdferr > “From Mollie Hemingway — An actual news story about the (false) news production industry with actual new news in it!:”

    Incredibly important new information from Mollie, in addition to an excellent brief review of the entire Russia Hoax.
    An additional excerpt:

    Back on the roof in January of 2017, Evan Perez was shown on television reading and reporting on Clapper’s statement from a remote location. Tapper and his colleagues interpreted the statement as confirmation of their story and a repudiation of Trump’s dismissal of the Russia collusion story as false.

    While Perez’s package was airing, and at the point he read Clapper saying that he didn’t think the leak came from the intelligence community, Sciutto said that he was pretty sure Clapper knew the leak came from the intelligence community “because …,” he said, trailing off as he rolled his hands suggestively and somewhat like a football referee very slowly calling a false start. He said it for all to hear, though I’m not sure anyone else other than Jake Tapper, who he was sitting to the right of, and I heard and understood. Tapper squeezed Sciutto’s left wrist the way my mom used to squeeze my wrist at church when I was being too loud. I interpreted this message roughly as “stop talking you idiot.”

    Sciutto was a former Obama administration political appointee in the State Department. It wasn’t clear if he was saying that Clapper had leaked to him or one of his three co-authors, a Clapper aide had leaked to CNN, or merely that Clapper knew Comey or one of his aides was leaking to CNN.

    It may be hard to remember, but at this point in the Russia collusion information operation, people knew almost nothing. … We really knew nothing about how corrupt and political the deep state was. And we didn’t yet understand that major media existed almost exclusively as regime mouthpieces, uncritically serving as leak receptacles for the information operations they run against the American people.

    After we were done that day, Tapper came up to me on the roof — something he rarely did when I saw him at CNN — and told me that he really wanted to get me on his Sunday show. I perceived this as an attempt to keep me quiet about what I had witnessed. It failed, and I began writing immediately about how the dossier story was an information operation being fueled by top officials in the intelligence community. I published “Top-Level Intel Officers’ War Against Donald Trump Is Bad For The Country,” a few days later.

    I was able to write that piece, as well as spend the next few years confidently fighting the Russia collusion hoax under unbelievable resistance, because of Jim Sciutto and Jake Tapper’s actions that day. I already doubted the Russia collusion hoax because I knew actual Trump voters, but that day I realized that even the authors of the signature Russia collusion article knew that it was an intelligence community leak operation and were uncritically regurgitating it. If I knew enough to do what I did based on that tiny interaction between Jim Sciutto and Jake Tapper, Jake Tapper sure as hell knew enough to not take part in the regime’s information operation he promulgated every day for the next few years.

    Tapper is trying to hide now, inaccurately saying he merely reported what government operatives leaked to him. What he did was much worse. But even if that was all he did, it would be indefensible.

  34. Many have said this is Trump’s race to lose (including me). Not a baseball fan, but do sorta keep track of the Series. Daily Mail has an article up on a game where a Yankee fan tries to pull a ball outta Mookie Betts’ glove, and another fan grabs Betts’ other arm!? These two fans patrol the wall just in case of something like that. So this election isn’t the only thing getting outta hand…

    Haley on ‘standby’ to help ‘overly masculine’ campaign

    Before I start quoting the article – its title reminds me of the ‘Chatter’ I have been seeing here about Women Voters & the 19th Amendment.

    In an interview Tuesday, she didn’t mince words with how the controversial event in New York went, especially comic Tony Hinchcliffe’s joke about Puerto Rico as an ‘island of garbage.’

    ‘This bromance and this masculinity stuff, it borders on edgy to the point that it’s gonna make women uncomfortable,’ Haley said.

    She cited an ad by a super PAC run by Elon Musk calling Kamala Harris the c-word and a cut joke from Hinchcliffe’s set that planned to call the vice president the same word.

    ‘That is not the way to win women. This is not the way to win people who are concerned about Trump’s style,’ she said.

    Didn’t watch the Madison Square Garden rally, but it was immediately obvious the next day that something was not right when I saw – ‘Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage”’.

    Haley may have been harsh on her “’overly masculine’ campaign” comment, but then again—just look at what is being said about Women Voters here on this blog—not a lot, but more than enough to notice. Then add in the damage of‘Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage”’GEEZ!?!

    That behavior can’t keep happening if Republicans want Trump to win…

  35. Karmi: “That behavior can’t keep happening if Republicans want Trump to win…”
    Actually, it can if we want to continue to promote and honor the first amendment on free speech. That is even more important than getting Trump into the WH.
    Now, we can debate about whether such speech should be happening, but that is a different conversation about social norms, etiquette, etc., and not constitutional and natural human rights.
    And Karmi, you know this, but sometimes we all get a little carried away. 🙂

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

HTML tags allowed in your comment: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>