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You are here: Home / Politics / America / The New Hydroxychloroquine Social Media Push Is Step 1 In a New Influence Operation

The New Hydroxychloroquine Social Media Push Is Step 1 In a New Influence Operation

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A new push to promote hydroxychloroquine began yesterday. While it got kicked off in the real world by a real person with some real issues at a rally covered by Breitbart Media, that coverage was designed to move it onto social media.

This is step 1 of a new influence op. It sets the conditions for step 2, which is blaming doctors who refused to prescribe it; the FDA commissioner because the FDA has removed the emergency use exemption; Dr. Fauci; the World Health Organization; governors, especially Democratic ones who didn’t want shipments of it; and Democratic officials in general and VP Biden in specific, for all the COVID-19 deaths because they wouldn’t use or endorse the use of hydrochloroquine to treat patients infected with COVID-19. Step 3 will flow from step 2, and will be the the President and his surrogates going on the offensive against all of these folks to shift the blame onto them.

Open thread!

Reader Interactions

183Comments

  2. 2.

    JMG

    I think the die is cast here. A significant majority doesn’t trust a word Trump says about the virus and that’s not gonna change. Dead relatives tend to outweigh spin.

  3. 3.

    MagdaInBlack

    Well, won’t this be a fun ride.

    Thank you, Adam, I was scratchin’ my head over this one.

  4. 4.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Rob: I do too.

  6. 6.

    wvng

    A full court press of bull$hit. It is endless. Grassley and Johnson are pushing Ukraine conspiracy theories in the Senate.

  8. 8.

    Caphilldcne

    I’m always curious who plans and funds these campaigns. I assume Russian bots have jumped on another chance to create chaos. Curious about coordination. Hope this isn’t forgotten and is eventually investigated. We need a lot more sunshine laws.

  9. 9.

    Crashman06

    Didn’t they attempt to push hydroxychloroquine months ago and it didn’t really work? How is this different?

  11. 11.

    laura

    This looks like a pump and dump. Adam, is this the kind of thing that is consistent with a bust out?

  12. 12.

    Gravenstone

    I say we demand documented proof of Trump taking his n doses per day for say, 2-3 weeks.  The side effects should be spectacular by then. Especially in an already mentally infirm individual.

  13. 13.

    Ohio Mom

    Gravenstone: What you would want is an EKG, because one of the risks of hydroxychloroqine is a screwed up heart rhythm.

  14. 14.

    Poe Larity

    The Feds felt left out with the hippie punching

    WASHINGTON — From the earliest days of the recent protests against police brutality and racism, some top federal law enforcement officials viewed the demonstrators with alarm and called for an aggressive federal response that two months later continues to escalate.

  15. 15.

    Cheryl Rofer

    It’s entirely possible that this is the intention. If it is, I doubt it will have traction beyond being a new chew toy for the faithful. This afternoon, Trump reiterated his admiration for this person, who said masks are not necessary in a video Trump retweeted and Twitter took down. She also believes that scientists are using dna from aliens to make a vaccine against religion and that gynecological problems are caused by sex with incubuses.

  16. 16.

    Mike in NC

    Sinclair Broadcasting apparently made a hit piece on Dr. Fauci but then shelved it for now.

  17. 17.

    randy khan

    I’m seeing it in my social media already, with complaints about how Twitter is censoring this great information.  I just point out that it was Trump’s FDA that decided to end the emergency use exemption when the clinical studies showed it had no beneficial effect.  It probably doesn’t change their minds, but they don’t really have a good answer to that.

    Apparently one of the things that impresses them is that there’s a doctor in the video who explains the mechanism by which hydroxychloroquine is supposed to work.  Of course, pharma labs are littered with prospective drugs that researchers thought would work and did not.

  18. 18.

    David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    Trump lamenting Fauci’s popularity, saying it’s “sort of curious a man works for us with us very closely, Dr. Fauci, and Dr. Birx also highly thought of, and yet they’re highly thought of but nobody likes me.” pic.twitter.com/8lIT2dVbfL
    — Manu Raju (@mkraju) July 28, 2020

  19. 19.

    dmsilev

    When someone asked Trump why he reTweeted that video, he literally ran away from the question, cutting today’s “briefing” short.

    I hate this year.

  21. 21.

    rikyrah

     

    Once again..
    The fools in the MSM who were pumping up
    “The President ‘s new tone”

    Bullshyt

    Today…we get Demon sperm from Dolt45😒😒

    So….here is the MSM….
    Look like fools, once again.
    Like so many here say…
    They are desperate for their horse race, and COVID-19 is denying them that.
    They can’t cover for him.
    There is no ” both sides”
    They haven’t found the 2020 version of. BUT, HER EMAILS..

    And, it’s killing them😒

  22. 22.

    Sm*t Cl*de

    step 2, which is blaming doctors who refused to proscribe it

    You misspelled “counter-revolutionary saboteurs”.

  25. 25.

    Jay

    The mayor and police chief of Richmond, Virginia, say rioting that followed a Black Lives Matter protest Saturday, after more than a month of largely peaceful protests in the city, was instigated by white supremacists. At a news conference Sunday, Mayor Levar Stoney said,

    There were white supremacists marching under the banner of Black Lives Matter, attempting to undermine an otherwise overwhelmingly peaceful movement towards social justice.
    Stoney also thanked local Black Lives Matters organizers for condemning the white supremacists, saying the rioters’ mission was to “undermine the month of [peaceful], community-driven protest that this city has seen. It’s not the Richmond we know.” People who have regularly been at the protests said the crowd that rioted near Richmond’s police station wasn’t connected with them.

    https://www.wonkette.com/police-say-richmond-riot-started-by-white-supremacists

  26. 26.

    debbie

    It’s the Trump family’s investments in the company/companies making the stuff that are driving this.

  27. 27.

    lgerard

    Tim Murtaugh, the Trump campaign communications director, confirmed to AP that an effort to recruit doctors to publicly support the president is underway, but declined to say when the initiative would be rolled out.

    “Anybody who joins one of our coalitions is vetted,” Murtaugh said Monday. “And so quite obviously, all of our coalitions espouse policies and say things that are, of course, exactly simpatico with what the president believes. … The president has been outspoken about the fact that he wants to get the country back open as soon as possible.”

    I wonder who “vetted” this nut.
    I’m thinking Junior.

  28. 28.

    debbie

    @Ohio Mom:

    No mention of the other side effects (liver and eye damage)?

    FWIW, I think this is the Trump family manipulating the market to cash in on their investments in pharmaceutical companies.

  29. 29.

    JaneE

    I heard a news report on CBS radio today that Eastman Kodak is getting a big loan to provide chemical components for generic medicines in this country to facilitate pharmaceutical independence.  Specific mention was made of a component of hydroxychloroquine. I thought we already had a stockpile we had no takers for.

  30. 30.

    dmsilev

    @Sister Golden Bear: The amazing, so to speak, thing is that he’s kept the press briefings short this time, like twenty or thirty minutes, and still manages to pivot all the way past crazy and into abject lunacy.

  31. 31.

    Sm*t Cl*de

    @Cheryl Rofer:

    gynecological problems are caused by sex with incubuses

    I didn’t have “Trump’s favorite doctor uses the Malleus Maleficarum as a medical textbook” in my Bingo card for 2020.

  32. 32.

    The Pale Scot

    With my comorbidities strapping on a suicide vest and finding a good target is seeming like a good way to go out. The look on there faces as I scream Bolsheviks Rule! is worth pushing the button.

    Better than waiting for ‘rona down here in port Charlotte where the three guys in Publix not wearing masks were all wearing Trump 2020 hats.

     

    As Sandahl Bergman said as she patted her broadsword, “what, you want to live forever?”

  34. 34.

    Ken

    @JMG: Credibility would be helpful. That’s probably why they chose an outside voice, a medical professional who says that hydroxychloroquine is necessary to… um, apparently to counter the effects of alien DNA and incubi. Wow.

    Still, more believable than Trump at this point.

  38. 38.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @JMG:

    This

     

    @randy khan:

    I just point out that it was Trump’s FDA that decided to end the emergency use exemption when the clinical studies showed it had no beneficial effect.  It probably doesn’t change their minds, but they don’t really have a good answer to that.

    Yeah, the “buck stops here” is not a concept they can grasp when it comes to Trump

    I often wonder how right wingers would respond if liberals just started spouting “fake news” at crap they go on about

  40. 40.

    Sm*t Cl*de

    @randy khan:

    Trump’s FDA that decided to end the emergency use exemption when the clinical studies showed it had no beneficial effect.  It probably doesn’t change their minds, but they don’t really have a good answer to that.

    DEEP STATE.

  41. 41.

    The Thin Black Duke

    Stupid people are going to keep on doing stupid things. Everybody else is going to keep on wearing masks, stay the hell out of bars, restaurants and movie theaters, and try to hang on until November when we can put an end to this madness.

  42. 42.

    Miss Bianca

    @Gin & Tonic: every time I think, “it just can’t get more grotesquely bizarre than this” – whatever the “this” happens to be at the moment – I am always wrong.

    Currently doing a rewatch of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” Here I was looking for escapism, and the universe decides the US needs to *become* Sunnydale.

  44. 44.

    khead

    But I think you’d have been very hard pressed to predict which side would be pro-hydrochloroquine or even pro-mask.

    No, no you wouldn’t.  All you’d need to know is that it’s the wingnuts that believe in fantasies and politicize everything.  And I mean EVERYthing.   In this case it’s the fantasy of needing a Hail Mary cure to save Trump’s political fortunes.  The politicizing of masks follows for the same reason.

  46. 46.

    NotMax

    This is ‘Murka. Had state and county fairs proceeded apace this year, vendors would be hawking deep-fried hydroxychloroquine. On a stick.

    //

  47. 47.

    Butter Emails

    But I think you’d have been very hard pressed to predict which side would be pro-hydrochloroquine or even pro-mask. For me this severe politicization of the entirely arbitrary highlights the ingroup-outgroup dynamics of the entire epidemic.

    Yeah. This part of the tweet chain is bullshit. The only reason you wouldn’t have been able to predict which side would support taking hydrochloroquine and which side would support wearing masks is because there was no knowledge regarding efficacy at the time. If hydrochloroquine had proven to have a prophylactic effect with reasonable risks, Democrats would have supported high risk individuals taking it. Similarly, if masks had been totally ineffectual, they wouldn’t have bothered to push mask wearing.

  48. 48.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Sm*t Cl*de:

    DEEP STATE.

    The whole “Deep State” thing is always so convenient, isn’t it? Nothing is ever Trump’s fault and he’s forever a victim.

    How the hell do they think this guy is the manliest man who ever manned a man? He’s a foppish loser

  49. 49.

    frosty

    @JMG: I’m gonna go with this. Over 60% of the country thinks Trump is wrong. I don’t think there’s any social media campaign that’s going to overcome that. He lies, people know it, and Rudy is a joke.

  50. 50.

    Ohio Mom

    Debbie: Gravenstone wanted to see what would happen to Trump after a few weeks of taking hydroxychloroquine and I’m guessing the heart rhythm issues would show up quickest. Especially if Trump is taking another med that would interact with it. Just being silly, really.

    I’ve been taking hydroxychloroquine for three years now without any side effects beyond occasional heartburn. But I did have an EKG and continue to have regular retina checks.

    It’s a very cheap drug so it’s hard for me to see how you could make gobs if money off of it, but then again, Trump has already shown that he isn’t much of a businessman.

    It doesn’t sound like this latest attempt to hype it is going to cause another shortage, so that is good news for me.

  51. 51.

    Tony Jay

    If there’s one big truth I’ve come to understand over the last 20 years or so, it’s that the Bad Guys have agency. They’re not cartoon figures waiting for the hero to deliver that one, decisive punch to the jaw that will solve everything (apart from a couple of loose ends that the sequel can spin out of) and leave us feeling good about ourselves. They’re people, shitty people, but still people, with 24 hours a day to fill with thinking about getting the things they want to get done, done.

    So when I hear that the Bad Guys are going to do something shitty and dishonest that will disgust and anger me rather than just lay down and make meeping sounds, that’s…… not even a little bit surprising, its just (checks calendar) Wednesday.

    And tomorrow it will be Thursday, and they will still be the Bad Guys and they’ll still be doing horrible things while claiming not to be bad guys. Hell, they’ll also have ‘serious journalists’ pretending to believe their shit and telling lies for them, and that will piss me off too.

    Perils of being the Good Guys, I suppose. And that will never, ever change. Doesn’t have to wind me up though, not if I don’t let it.

    Sermon over. (drops mic)

  53. 53.

    ballerat

    I began seeing things about hydroxy yesterday too and thought I’d somehow stumbled onto months-old threads. Nope.

    Russians. We got a 40% National Enquirer populace and the Russians have discovered how to play these fools.

    It’s our nation’s greatest weakness. They finally found our society’s achilles’ heel.

  55. 55.

    Brachiator

    The renewed HCQ hype may indeed be a push to scapegoat the medical establishment for disaster caused by Trump’s disinformation and his obstruction of control measures, testing infrastructure, data collection, and more.

    This is not simply desperate. This is insane. Right wing nut jobs support Trump even though the result may end up killing his own devoted base, and themselves.

    The few remaining sane or moderate conservatives have been pushed aside. Now it is “we must win and nothing else matters,” even if victory only means that you get to sit on top of a pile of rotting bodies.

    But even some supposedly moderate conservatives are insane. Local conservative talk show hosts insist that the pandemic could be beaten if only right thinking, patriotic people were left to use their common sense and personal responsibility to figure out on their own the best way to fight the virus.  You don’t need medical experts and government officials telling you what to do. Note that this guy is in favor of wearing masks, but only based on the voluntary judgment of each individual. And I don’t know, maybe the Baby Jesus whispering encouragement in the ears of good Christians.

    And yet, even though you can’t trust the medical experts, and can’t trust the government, they still trust Trump, because … reasons. His heart is in the right place? Even though his head is up his ass. It defies logic and comes down to Though shalt trust anyone who play acts at being conservative. Hallowed be Reagan’s name.

  56. 56.

    sdhays

    Back in 2019 you might have been able to predict some things: GOP wouldn’t want to limit church services and Democrats would want free health care….

    But I think you’d have been very hard pressed to predict which side would be pro-hydrochloroquine or even pro-mask.

    I’m sorry, but WTF, Carl? For both of those things, all you have to do is simplify it down to “which party’s supporters believed and followed the best advice of actual experts in epidemiology and medicine and which party’s followers descended into crackpot conspiracies validating their desire to take absolutely no personal responsibility for anyone else?”.

    Put that way, it would have been pretty clear which would be which in 2019 (or, really, even 1999).

  58. 58.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Mike in NC: Sinclair didn’t make it. It debuted on YouTube a couple of month’s back. The whack job medical researcher in it is, via her attorney Larry Klayman, suing Fauci. And several other people. And Klayman went full Klayman in his filings.

    Never go full Klayman!

  59. 59.

    Cameron

    This is why I found Harvey Risch’s Newsweek opinion piece touting hydroxychloroquine so jarring.  Here’s somebody who appears to be a solid scientist not only advocating use of this stuff but claiming there are legit studies out there that support his claims.  It is so completely out of whack with the prevailing views of the medical and scientific communities that I’m tempted to think of it as a spoof.  Bur Risch actually exists and he actually is at Yale.  I think I’m going to resist the urge to use this stuff until he can offer some more robust support.

  63. 63.

    debbie

    @Ohio Mom:

    I’ve been on it for more than 30 years and never heard anything about heart issues. Guess I need to ask my doc next time I see her.

  64. 64.

    Bill Arnold

    This thread (July 16) is interesting and might be a key node supporting or driving some of this influence effort. I have not most of the papers yet; they superficially appear to be intellectually honest and end with “need proper RCTs for hydroxychloroquine as a preventative”.

    My Hydroxychloroquine Deep Dive – long thread

    Gotta start with this chart many of you have seen by now

    In early June after months of following articles, treatment protocols, declarations, etc. I was curious about how the countries lined up. For the most part, it’s accurate pic.twitter.com/BjQ14XV7x2
    — Gummi Bear (@gummibear737) July 16, 2020

    I’m going to read all this with an open mind. COVID-19 has been punishing dogma and preconceptions. (e.g. still looking at Vitamin D to reduce percentage of severe cases, which has a few observational studies, and now some proper clinical trials. Really cheap to prevent Vit D deficiency in a population.)

    But as people are noting, there are probably many actors and motives involved, some utterly amoral.
    Masks were clear by early April, and 3 months later some countries including the US are still arguing about practical ways to reduce sharing of unfiltered newly exhaled air. Lack of proven fomite/indirect contact transmission is currently in play.

  67. 67.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Jay: And Umbrella Man in Minneapolis is also a white supremacist. Belongs to an Aryan biker gang.

  69. 69.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Tony Jay:

    And tomorrow it will be Thursday, and they will still be the Bad Guys and they’ll still be doing horrible things while claiming not to be bad guys.

    Well, it’s said that everybody’s the hero of their own story

    You reminded me of this quote from the underrated Schwarzenegger movie, Last Action Hero, where Arnold plays a caricature of both his film roles and himself when his character, Jack Slater, and the villain from the movie within a movie, travel to the “real world” during the film’s climax:

    Benedict : Gentlemen. Since you are about to die anyway, I may as well tell you the entire plot. Think of villains Jack. You want Dracula? Dra-cool-la? Hang on

    [takes out the ticket] 

    I’ll fetch him. Dracula? Huh. I can get King Kong! We’ll have a nightmare with Freddy Krueger, have a surprize party for Adolf Hitler, Hannibal Lecter can do the catering, and then we’ll have christening for Rosemary’s Baby! All I have to do is snap my fingers and they’ll be here. They’re lining up to get here, and do you know why Jack? Should I tell you why? Hmm? Because here, in this world, the bad guys can win!

    That quote always really stuck with me. Because it’s often sadly true

  70. 70.

    Mike in NC

    @ballerat: I’ll bet some Russian analysts were once shown episodes of “The Apprentice” and decided we were a nation of sadistic imbeciles like Trump.

  74. 74.

    Kent

    @khead:

    But I think you’d have been very hard pressed to predict which side would be pro-hydrochloroquine or even pro-mask.

    No, no you wouldn’t.  All you’d need to know is that it’s the wingnuts that believe in fantasies and politicize everything.  And I mean EVERYthing.   In this case it’s the fantasy of needing a Hail Mary cure to save Trump’s political fortunes.  The politicizing of masks follows for the same reason.

    There is the pro-science side.    And there is the other side.

    Which side the parties or winguts take is entirely predictable.

  76. 76.

    opiejeanne

    @Poe Larity: I haven’t read the whole thread, but has anyone mentioned that the Fed’s goons have left Seattle? I’m not sure why our governor and mayor and state AG were able to do what Oregon has not been able to, unless the goons left there too.

  79. 79.

    Yutsano

    @opiejeanne: Durkin or Inslee found a way to tell them “You don’t have to go home but you can’t stay here” somehow. I have no idea what that magical formula was, but if it worked it worked. Plus the Seattle police are doing the job of trying to incentivize violence on their own.

  80. 80.

    Bill Arnold

    @Cheryl Rofer:
    It’s interesting how Christianity has collided with local (Cameroon, Nigeria) witchcraft/sorcerer (deep) traditions, combined with derivatives of Western fringe stuff like David Icke
    The vaccine against religion stuff is new to me, interesting, and loopy. If one wants to modify human brains, a (symptom-less) virus is a better tool. :-)

  85. 85.

    Ohio Mom

    Debbie: if you have managed 30 years, you are probably fine. With me, there was a question about another med I take interacting; I figure Trump probably takes a bunch of different things, both formally prescribed and not.

  87. 87.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    A commenter, Kay I think, linked to Biden’s statement on what’s going on in Portland:

    The replies are all full of far-left nut jobs making false equivalences between Trump and Biden:

    Here’s a few examples:

    god I hate how BLM has been co-opted by such spineless liberals.

    They are fighting to protect their ivory towers and hoarded wealth just like the Republicans, but why do they have to be so whiney and performative about it?

    Not just like the Republicans. They ARE the republicans.

    both of them will use violence and force to squash these protest. they’ll use the same language and the same tactics. Trump will tweet about it, Biden won’t.

     

    Yeah it really feels like the libs have all just forgotten about Standing Rock, assuming they were even paying attention to it at the time

    they barely cared then.

    cool, so the desire to see civil rights protestors arrested, harmed and possibly killed is undeniably bipartisan

    Only if you recognize Republicans and Republican-lites as being of two distinct parties

     

    Matt Harris
    @_MattHarris_

    ·
    4h

    “Arsonists and anarchists should be prosecuted.” Uhh. Arson is a crime, yes. Does Biden also believe being an anarchist is a crime and can be prosecuted, now?

    YimbyAlexandria

    @YimbyA

    ·
    4h

    I’m quite sure he meant it in the colloquial sense “anarchy on the streets ” not “one who believes in the doctrines of Bakunin.

    pumpactionmusket #IBelieveTara

    @pumpactionmusk1

    ·2h

    The fact that he used the term in conjunction with “rioters” and “looters” as Trump has done time and time again is most definitely cause for worry.

    Well, I’m sure the person with #IBelieveTara in their Twitter handle knows what they’re talking about and is credibl

    The reference to Standing Rock is troubling, though. I barely remember what happened. It did happen on Obama and Biden’s watch

  89. 89.

    jl

    Why aren’t they going with swigging bleach? More people understand what bleach is. Could scoop more docs who oppose swigging bleach to cure covid-19 and smear them.

    These guys, they’re losing their PR touch.

  90. 90.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Florida was always going to have a Republican governor elected in 2018. Florida Republicans were given the choice between the traditionally, in the Reagan Republican sense, very conservative and very dull Adam Putnam. Putnam was first elected to office, county level, when he was an undergrad at UF. From there he went on to the state legislature, the House of Representatives, and then Florida Ag Commissioner and DeSantis. The Florida Republican primary voters decided they wanted flashy, fleshy, and Trumpy. Putnam was, as far as I could tell, competent. DeSantis isn’t.

  91. 91.

    The Pale Scot

    @raven:

    That’s in’s the Gulf, where I am it’s a 200 dollar run to get out of the harbor, Port Charlotte sucks in so many ways. I got stuck here while transitioning locations. Sarasota to the north and Ft Myers to the south are hotspots. The only reason Charlotte county is isn’t is ’cause there’s nothing to do here, there’s nobody except Trump humping geezers from the midwest who love humidity. God I’d love to get back on the coast. This place sucks

  94. 94.

    Dan B

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Don’t worry Adam Silverman is stepping into the phone booth (!?) to slip into his superhero outfit and save Flariduh! (Can just borrow Superman’s since the S works fine.)

     

    Don’t you feel better now…

  97. 97.

    Dan B

    @opiejeanne: Great news!  Now we can begin to rebuild as soon as the smouldering embers of the caldera have cooled.

    At least that’s what friends and relatives believe.  (tongue in cheek, except for my partner’s sister)

  98. 98.

    marklar

    Tinder has just sent out this warning…ONLY SWIPE LEFT OR RIGHT.  IF YOU SWIPE UP OR DOWN YOU MIGHT GET A VISIT FROM A SPIRIT HUSBAND AND CATCH ENDOMETRIOSIS, OR A SPIRIT WIFE AND END UP WITH PEYRONIE’S DISEASE.

  100. 100.

    Kay

    It’s just all so ham-handed. “Those who suppressed its use are directly responsible for deaths!”

    Say the people who are responsible for the deaths.

    I always get the feeling that sometime around mid-June all the crooks and dopes and con men in Trumpland looked around and said “holy shit- look what we did” and it’s all been pure, chaotic panic since then.  I wonder which one was the first to realize it wasn’t just “disappearing”.

  104. 104.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Kay: All of what we’ve seen with the President, his surrogates, and his enables are all classic examples of Neutralization and Drift. This is condemn the condemners.

  105. 105.

    opiejeanne

    @Dan B: I answered your question about our trip to Arkansas after the thread was dead. Dave was a trustee for his great-aunt’s son after her death, and we had to travel to Little Rock to set up a bank account for him, help him buy a pickup, and help him avoid a con man who wanted to help him invest his money. The trip was a heck of an adventure, and Bobby lied to us, to the bank, to his lawyers, and to everyone else. He loaned the truck to a guy with a drunk driving habit, who totaled the truck when it was 3 months old. He was drunk himself and hit and killed a woman in that horrible town that used to have open sewers in the street in the black part of town but they have a casino.

    Think Forrest Gump but without all that charm, and maybe half the brains.

  107. 107.

    Kay

    It’s hard to get your head around the sheer SIZE of what they did. Every single person in the country was negatively and directly affected by their fuck-up, in ways small or large, but everyone.

  108. 108.

    Adam L Silverman

    @MomSense: If the heat, the humidity, the biting flies, the snakes, the gators, and the old people in golf carts and hover rounds don’t get you, the hurricanes and the Republican majority legislature will!

    I wrote this back at the beginning of January:

    https://arkvalleyvoice.com/thinking-security-emergency-management-and-disaster-response-during-the-covid-19-pandemic/

    The real question now is whether anyone has worked out a plan of what to do given that almost everything we’d normally do to respond to a hurricane is exactly the opposite of what we want to do because of the pandemic.

  111. 111.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Gin & Tonic:

    Demon jizz is not something I ever thought I’d be talking about in a political discussion outside a PornHub video….

  113. 113.

    The Pale Scot

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Are you ready for a HurriCoronacane?

    Fuck.

    I know this is going to come down to me wrapping my dad in ducktape, throwing him in the backseat and driving north.

  114. 114.

    Peale

    I’m rolling my eyes, but given how we’ve not been able to stop any dumb idea from become a political force in the past 20 years, from flat earth, to anti-vaxx, to birtherism, to ground zero mosques, to wearing masks gives you carbon monoxide poisoning, to rubbing your skin with mercury prevents illness, to Greenland is for Sale, or whatever…I fully expect now to spend the next 10 years fighting a rear guard battle preventing hydroxychloroquine from becoming a common children’s cereal additive.

  115. 115.

    different-church-lady

    It’s no exaggeration: they have turned themselves into a DEATH CULT, and we need to start saying it. It’s not cute, it’s not merely a political insult, it’s a reality.

  116. 116.

    L85NJGT

    @JaneE:

    They have taken to loaning federal monies to failing concerns with significant unfunded pension loads.

    Eastman Chemicals was spun off in 1994. Kodak doesn’t make much of anything anymore.. They are mostly just a brand label now.

  120. 120.

    Jay Noble

    Yak Bait/Trap – Any shower drain prone to hair clogs. Granted, I haven’t caught one yet but they’ve been using my shower and leaving yak hair clogs

  121. 121.

    lgerard

    Alright, this is scary

    Before his political awakening this spring, Peter Diaz lived a quiet life near this leafy liberal bastion at the base of the Puget Sound. He ran a tree-trimming service and a business that built office cubicles. He was 37 and had never voted.

    Now he has formed his own political party and is the leader of American Wolf, a roving band of civilians who have anointed themselves “peacekeepers” amid months of tense protests over racism and policing. In the name of law and order, members of his informal group have shot paintballs at demonstrators and carry zip ties and bear spray as they look for antifascists. Diaz has done “recon” in Minneapolis and Seattle’s “autonomous zone,” and drove his American Wolf mobile home to Mount Rushmore to celebrate Independence Day with President Trump.

    It’s not just boaters anymore

    (WAPO)

  122. 122.

    The Pale Scot

    @Mike in NC:

    I’ll bet some Russian analysts were once shown episodes of “The Apprentice” and decided we were a nation of sadistic imbeciles like Trump.

    Word

  123. 123.

    kindness

    Before Trump’s time in office I would never have believed people would push themselves to be so stupid just to be a part of the tribe.  But then Trump happened.  Now, I believe it is possible.

    Putin is trying to throw Trump a lifeline and Trump is desparate enough to openly grab for it.  Won’t matter to the 27%.  What about the rest of us?

  124. 124.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Peale: It’s like the Internet concentrated the innate stupidity of the species.

  125. 125.

    different-church-lady

    Trying to dump the stocks they stupidly bought at the outset of the pandemic? Trying to kill GOP voters? Just sowing chaos?

    Completely overthinking it: nothing more than peak Cleek’s law. Democrats and liberals believe in science, the science says Hydroxychloroquine is junk, and therefore Hydroxychloroquine must be defended!!1! Because if it isn’t they have to admit they were wrong about something, and that will simply never happen.

  126. 126.

    Kay

    @lgerard:

    He ran a tree-trimming service and a business that built office cubicles

    Yeah sure he did. People who have a tree trimming business trim trees. They have to do a lot of it and they don’t get paid for “recon missions”. A “roving band” lifestyle is incompatible with supporting yourself building office cubicles.
    It’s a little like how none of the Trump kids ever go to work yet they supposedly manage multi-million dollar enterprises. When do they do that?

  127. 127.

    patrick II

    Trump needs to make it to Nov 3.  To do that he wants to open business and schools.  That becomes easier if there is a magic potion medicine that will calm fears and make one immune to the coronavirus.  Meanwhile, Trump and FOX (except Wallace) and Limbaugh explain that we have the lowest death rate in the world and 39,9% of people believe him.  (He dropped below 40 at 538 today).

    That’s the plan at least.

  130. 130.

    different-church-lady

    @Tony Jay:

    Hell, they’ll also have ‘serious journalists’ pretending to believe their shit and telling lies for them, and that will piss me off too.

    That’s because those journalists have become bad guys too.

  133. 133.

    mrmoshpotato

    @rikyrah:

    They haven’t found the 2020 version of. BUT, HER EMAILS..

    And, it’s killing them😒

    As a wise man once said, Fuckem!

  134. 134.

    Kay

    Do they worry that the conspiracy theory doctor was crazy as shit right out of the gate and she’ll only get crazier as she gets more attention and fame?  This was the high point for this stunt. It goes nowhere but down from here. Guaranteed. This was their BEST day. She’s not going to get better with more exposure!

  135. 135.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Gin & Tonic:

    “Sex With Demons Makes You Sick.”

    You know, I’m going to rate this as “likely true.”

    Does this include those who are demons in the sack?

  136. 136.

    Kay

    Stella Immanuel MD
    @stella_immanuel
    · 3h
    The Daily Beast did a great job summarizing our deliverance ministry and exposing incubus and succubus. Thank you daily beast. If you need deliverance from these spirits. Contact us.

    This is her FIRST day as a Right wing celebrity. Goes nowhere good from here.

  140. 140.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Miss Bianca:

    Currently doing a rewatch of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” Here I was looking for escapism, and the universe decides the US needs to *become* Sunnydale. 

    The series or, hehehe?

  141. 141.

    The Pale Scot

    @Adam L Silverman:

    The real question now is whether anyone has worked out a plan of what to do given that almost everything we’d normally do to respond to a hurricane is exactly the opposite of what we want to do because of the pandemic.

    Fuck No, THBSTATSTQ

     

    Edit” I’ll cu t u a break on what the “S” stands for

  142. 142.

    Peale

    @Kay: I wish I could be so sure. I’m predicting that by the time I actually need it, Medicare will not only be required to pay for exorcisms, it will be the only treatment it pays for.

  143. 143.

    Peale

    @The Pale Scot: Well to be fair, when we started worrying about the pandemic we all went to the grocery store to stock up on toilet paper and eggs, creating national shortages. That’s kind of what people do before a hurricane.

  147. 147.

    Adam L Silverman

    @The Pale Scot: Here you go:

    https://www.startribune.com/police-umbrella-man-was-a-white-supremacist-trying-to-incite-floyd-rioting/571932272/

    A masked man who was seen in a viral video smashing the windows of a south Minneapolis auto parts store during the George Floyd protests, earning him the moniker “Umbrella Man,” is suspected of ties with a white supremacist group and sought to incite racial tension, police said.

    A Minneapolis police arson investigator said the act of vandalism at the AutoZone on E. Lake Street helped spark a chain reaction that led to days of looting and rioting. The store was among dozens of buildings across the city that burned to the ground in the days that followed.

    “This was the first fire that set off a string of fires and looting throughout the precinct and the rest of the city,” Sgt. Erika Christensen wrote in a search warrant affidavit filed in court this week. “Until the actions of the person your affiant has been calling ‘Umbrella Man,’ the protests had been relatively peaceful. The actions of this person created an atmosphere of hostility and tension. Your affiant believes that this individual’s sole aim was to incite violence.”

    Police identified “Umbrella Man” thanks to a tip that came via e-mail last week, Christensen said.

    The Star Tribune could not independently verify the police account, which has so far only surfaced in the search warrant, and isn’t naming the man because so far he has not been charged with a crime. The man, who has a criminal history that includes convictions of domestic violence and assault, did not respond to messages seeking comment. Spokespersons for the Minneapolis Police Department and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which is also involved in the investigation, declined to comment.

    A widely shared livestream video from May 27 — two days after Floyd’s death — showed the man walking casually along the front of the former site of AutoZone at E. Lake Street and Minnehaha, breaking out its windows with a 4-pound sledgehammer, prompting some protesters to confront him and demand that he stop. Before that, police say, the man, clad head to toe in black and carrying a black umbrella, had spray-painted “free [expletive] for everyone zone” on the double front doors.

    At the time, activists seized on the footage as proof that outside “provocateurs” were trying to derail what had been a mostly peaceful demonstration. But others on social media pointed out that at least some looting had gone on before the video surfaced.

    Christensen wrote in the affidavit that she watched “innumerable hours” of videos on social media platforms to try to identify “Umbrella Man,” to no avail. Investigators finally caught a break when a tipster e-mailed the MPD identifying him as a member of the Hells Angels biker gang who “wanted to sow discord and racial unrest by breaking out the windows and writing what he did on the double red doors,” she wrote.

    Police have also connected the 32-year-old man to a widely publicized incident in Stillwater late last month, in which a Muslim woman was confronted by men wearing white supremacist garb.

    A subsequent investigation revealed the man was also an associate of the Aryan Cowboy Brotherhood, a small white supremacist prison and street gang based primarily in Minnesota and Kentucky. Several of its members were also present at the Stillwater incident.

    Much more at the link.

  156. 156.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Kay: It’s like someone ran Diamond, Silk, and Candace Owens through Dr. Brundle’s matter transporter and then gave the individual who emerged a medical degree.

  158. 158.

    Captain C

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    They are fighting to protect their ivory towers and hoarded wealth just like the Republicans, but why do they have to be so whiney and performative about it?

    What I want to know is, how many of these people are actually cosplay leftists and revolutionaries who live off of trust funds.

  160. 160.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Captain C: See my comment #144. They have no idea if it is going to actually turn into much more than it currently is, which is somewhere between a tropical wave and a tropical depression.

  163. 163.

    The Pale Scot

    @Adam L Silverman:

    This one bah.. But it’s only July. I was here for Charlie, the eye past over the house, if it wasn’t low tide things would have been pear shaped. 16 yrs later, pa’s like we managed that without power for 10 days. Fuck you, I’m leaving, your coming

  168. 168.

    dirge

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: It’s like the Internet concentrated the innate stupidity of the species.

    Correct.  The internet generally reduces the cost of communication and coordination.  Back in the dot com era, we spent a lot of time thinking about how that would benefit people like us, which was stupid, because we were already communicating and coordinating pretty effectively.  The really dramatic effect was the empowerment of the morons, who could never have come together as an organized polity without computer aided community design tools.

    I was always a bit skeptical of the utopian internet vision, but I see now that mere skepticism was unrealistically optimistic. Every new communication technology is followed by a wave of cranks, scams, and authoritarian cults, for the simple reason that making it cheaper and easier to communicate and coordinate tends to shift the balance of power in favor of those less able to do so. In favor of the assholes and idiots.

    Of course the printing press started wars. Of course radio started wars. Of course the internet is starting wars. All temporarily shift power in favor of morons, until thoughtful people are able to take control of the medium and shape it in their own favor.

    None of this goes away until Facebook and Twitter become, or are replaced by, platforms that are structurally hostile to stupidity and aggression.

  170. 170.

    lumpkin

    Bergstrom apparently hasn’t been paying attention to the world around him if he couldn’t figure out which party would be in favor of social responsibility and evidence based medicine and which would be in favor reckless irresponsibility and quack medicine.

  172. 172.

    Frank McCormick

    I have one major quibble with Kevin Roose touting the number of views for the America’s Frontline Doctor video.

    Views does not equal approval.

    In fact, I would bet that a significant number of those views are folks gawking at a dumpster fire and that a significant fraction of those folks are people like you or me that actually care to have the actual facts in hand when we condemn its contents.

    (Not that I’ve actually watched the video myself, mind you.  Not that I avoided do so, but mostly because I hadn’t actually come across it in any of my feeds.)

  176. 176.

    Barney

    @Adam L Silverman:  Steps 2 and 3 already happened yesterday! Trump retweeted a video of Immanuel, with text attacking “the suppression of hydroxychloroquine by Fauci & the Democrats to perpetuate Covid deaths to hurt Trump” https://www.mediaite.com/online/trump-goes-on-hydroxychloroquine-twitter-binge-retweets-anti-mask-conspiracies-and-false-claims-that-drug-is-cure-for-covid-19/
    The Wall Street Journal noticed it too: https://twitter.com/WSJ/status/1288131044638707719

    The man is genuinely paranoid. No one can lead an organisation when they claim their subordinates are letting people die to make them look bad.

  178. 178.

    debbie

    @Barney:

    With Trump’s reflexive transference, his statement really shows he is striving to kill lots of people so they can’t vote.

  179. 179.

    EmbraceYourInnerCrone

    @The Pale Scot: I loved her character in the first Conan but hated that they then made her the love interest and then killed her off to further the hero’s journey

    the 3 characters road movie buddy movie vibe was a lot of fun

  180. 180.

    EmbraceYourInnerCrone

    @Kathleen: well Forrest always said stupid is as stupid does. Or actually his momma said it. I know people who are not very intelligent but they are caring compassionate people. Trump and his ilk are stupid And evil. Ok some of them are just evil. And do not care if the world burns as long as they and theirs are doing well.

  181. 181.

    Chris Johnson

    So yeah, bear in mind please that we’re many years into a really intense war with Russia waged one-sidedly on the internets. This is not an abstraction, it’s extremely tangible and has very specific aims towards the goal of killing us as much as possible, which is more or less the idea of war on America so points for consistency I guess. Can’t blame them after we stuck them with Yeltsin… no, wait, yes I can, because that shit’s got to stop and not just escalate.

    What you need to know about this, in the event that you agree that Russia has gone to war against us by informational/propaganda means, is that the influence and propaganda operation has two obvious goals.

    One, to get both the government and the people totally fascist (this, while also propping up the leftist radicals and doing everything possible to MAKE ’em violent: remember, Russia does not want Trump to WIN or RULE or anything. Remember they want both sides to lose)

    Two, to claim all manner of bullshit for the purposes of scaring and radicalizing everyone. So, to the rightwingers they have a whole line of crap fed through QAnon about how everyone on the left are baby-eating savages, blah blah you know the drill.

    For US, they have a line of crap about how QAnon is a huge popular uprising taking over the nation, and they’re trying very hard to get as many Republicans throwing themselves on that sword as possible. Remember they do NOT want to protect the Republicans. They’re meant to be martyrs, they’re meant to fail. Ideally they’re meant to draw out wild reactions that can further be propagandized.

    Stay calm and carry on. Fight the institutions that are being twisted, and work towards shoring up the institutions that aren’t failing. If you conclude that everything is fucked because QAnon will rule for 1000 years you’re doing Putin’s work for him and you’re also ignoring the fact that Putin would literally turn around and begin sabotaging QAnon in turn the instant they started to show actual power. Russia does not suddenly love the American right.

  182. 182.

    Miss Bianca

    @mrmoshpotato: Ooh, yaassss…Paul Rubens for the win!

    Way, way late back to the thread, but…it took a long time for me to get into “Buffy” the series because I had loved the original movie, and thought the TV series would be a letdown! Shows you how much I know – nuffink!

  183. 183.

    Chris T.

    This thread is probably dead, but: someone on Fakebook should post a conspiracy theory saying that the hydroxychloroquine posts are actually from liberals trying to kill off conservatives, because it doesn’t work and raises your chance of death by poisoning your heart.  Then someone should post a theory that the theory that liberals are trying to kill off conservatives is itself a liberal theory that’s trying to keep conservatives from taking hydroxychloroquine.  That should be followed by a post that says that the latest claim is another false-flag claim …

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