Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I thought we were promised Infrastructure Week

The Math Demands It!

Naturally gregarious and alpha

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

Han shot first.

We still have time to mess this up!

No one could have predicted…

Usually wrong but never in doubt.

Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack!

Hot Air and Ill Informed Banter

Our job is not to persuade Republicans but to defeat them.

All your base are belong to Tunch.

Consistently wrong since 2002

We are aware of all internet traditions.

Almost as fun as hiking the Appalachian Trail.

Shock troops for the Unitarian Jihad.

Saul Alinsky is my co-pilot

Just a few bad apples.

Nevertheless, she persisted

We have all the best words.

What fresh hell is this?

Yes we did.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity.

Where tasty lettuce and good mustard aren’t elitist.

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Your Place Is In The Resistance

Cheap Snark Open Thread: Being Mean to MAGAt Morons

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I try not to encourage being mean to people (yeah, you should read me when the filters are *off*), but when people waltz into someone else’s online conversation attempting to ‘slay’ them, well — don’t start none, won’t *be* none, fellas. Since Ben Shapiro is well-compensated for being a professional Guy Who Never Learns, only fitting he lead this clown parade…

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Open Thread: Due Respect for Senator Romney

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This, right here. It hasn’t changed how I feel about Mitt Romney, and if he still lived in Massachusetts I might not be able to bring myself to say this, but he did the right thing by voting to impeach Trump.

And if that’s because he finally got to behave in a way that would make his old man proud… well, I’ve never heard a harsh word about George Romney from the Michiganders who lived through his governorship there. Which among others would include my Spousal Unit, along with political professional Dana Houle.

And he’s just made himself all the right enemies…

And he’s changed the top line in his obituary from that dinner with Trump:

Take your victories where you find them!

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Amateurs Take Down Disinformation Network

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On Twitter, one of the people I follow and interact with is Steffan Watkins, who follows ships and airplanes. Many sites follow ships and airplanes, and Steffan follows those sites to make sense out of who and what are going where. For example, Steffan knew a government plane was on its way long before we were told that President Trump was in Afghanistan.

He has recently been debunking stories about Russian ships and submarines off the east coast of the United States. This is a perennial story and is sometimes even true! Just as American ships and submarines do, Russian ships travel in many places in international waters. What they don’t do is dock at Mar-a-Lago.

Some of those stories come from real reporters who don’t understand what’s going on and repeat a version of something that is true but trivial. Sometimes their stories are based on dodgy websites that deliver deliberate disinformation, laundered through repetition and rumor.

Steffan doggedly checks out those news stories and sets them straight. That usually means that he debunks them, but occasionally he says yes, that Russian ship is off the coast in international waters on a normal patrol. Not once has he found the more sensational stories to be supported.

That’s what he was doing a couple of weeks ago and found a website that consistently was producing junk news stories and stealing stuff from other sites. They also advertised Trump merchandise.

That intrigued a couple of Israeli hackers, Noam Rotem and Ran Locar, who decided to check the website out. That link has all the detail for the more computer-savvy among us. Here’s their bottom line:

We found a network of dozens of websites operated by an affiliate marketer. Some of the websites pushed pro-Trump/anti-Clinton fake-news meant to use patriotism in order to sell unofficial Trump merch to Trump supporters. The technical aspects of the operation allowed us full visibility into not only the operators, but also the unwitting customers.

Many of the web addresses were registered by the same person, identified as Jackson Lin, through a company called Extreme Wisdom. Another company linked to some of the sites is Alabama company Click Wu LLC. They have been spending hundreds of thousands of dollars for advertising on Facebook. The pages have been taken down from Facebook.

Although Rotem and Locar say the motivation is money, it could be that or disinformation or both. It’s part of the stream of junk that flows through social media. It’s particularly  encouraging that a bunch of amateurs exposed it. Now I’d like to see a bigger news operation take it up.

For the rest of us? Be careful what you share or retweet. Know your sources.

Watergirl is doing some diagnostics. Between them and the problems currently infecting the site, I may not be able to comment. I’ll stick around for a bit.

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Tuesday Morning Open Thread: Think Diagonally

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(That’s Dan Scavino, Trump’s former golf caddy and reputed twitter-ghostwriter.)

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Saturday Morning Open Thread: Don’t Just Protest, Do It Fabulously!

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From the Washington Post, “A spice company spent more money on impeachment ads on Facebook than anyone not named Trump”:

… On Wednesday, Axios published a list of the entities spending the most money on Facebook ads on both sides of the impeachment debate. They included the usual suspects of the political war roll call, including Trump himself (he was top of the list, of course, at $718,000), Democratic presidential candidates Tom Steyer and Elizabeth Warren, and both the National Republican Congressional Committee and the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

But one name jumped off the screen for its sheer one-of-these-things-is-not-like-the-other factor: Penzeys Spices, the nation’s largest spice retailer, had dropped $92,000 from Sept. 29 to Oct. 5 on ads championing impeachment. That was more than self-funding millionaire Steyer, more than hard-charging Warren — more than anyone else other than Trump…

For many Penzeys fans, it comes as no surprise. The company has a history of unabashed liberal activism. Its founder, Bill Penzey, greeted Trump’s election with an email calling the president an “openly racist candidate.” As Helen Rosner noted in a New Yorker story last year, that set him far apart from the rest of the business-leader pack. He was “quite possibly the first to publicly call Trump’s election an ‘embrace of racism,’” she wrote. “And he was definitely the first to do so while hawking a free bottle of Quebec Seasonings with any five-dollar purchase.”…

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Friday Morning Open Thread: There’s Still Time!…

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Nobody tell Cole about this, he’s got enough on his plate ottoman already. But if you’re curious, ActionNews suggests checking the shelter’s Facebook page.

Elsewhere… The Repubs have already decided that Trump is gonna lose in 2020, because we all know deficits only matter when there’s a Democrat in the Oval Office:

Further proof:

So — while we must still do our best to Dump Trump — here’s to the success of Amy McGrath!

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Monday Morning Open Thread: “If You Witness… “

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Monday Morning Open Thread: “If You Witness… “Post + Comments (131)