It will never stop being funny to me how terrified of cities the American Right is https://t.co/8xHepBa28Z
— Connor Wroe Southard ⚔️?? (@ConnorSouthard) December 7, 2020
This post is in: GOP Death Cult, Information Warfare, Open Threads
It will never stop being funny to me how terrified of cities the American Right is https://t.co/8xHepBa28Z
— Connor Wroe Southard ⚔️?? (@ConnorSouthard) December 7, 2020
Plan B: March around the Supreme Court 7x and blow a shofar. https://t.co/yyAyO3x5NT
— Patrick Chovanec (@prchovanec) December 8, 2020
Traffic alert, per local station WTOP:
… According to the event’s website, which provides no contact information, around 17,000 supporters say they’re headed to the District for a rally around the National Sylvan Theater on the Mall — which is currently closed — from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m…
ShutdownDC has launched an effort in newsletters and social media posts, saying “conspiracy theorists, white supremacists, Proud Boys and MAGA supporters marched on our streets while refusing to wear masks” in November. And they’re asking local hotels, including the JW Marriott DC, the Grand Hyatt Washington, Crowne Plaza Crystal City and the Holiday Inn National Airport, to refuse rooms to MAGA March attendees.
D.C. police have released some expected street closures and no-parking areas, from Friday through Sunday…
The DCist website has info on a number of counter-protests.
This post is in: GOP Death Cult, Information Warfare, Republican Stupidity, Republicans in Disarray!, Trump Crime Cartel, Schadenfreude
The Twitter warning labels are getting better. pic.twitter.com/1kD7JTd8OJ
— Mig Greengard (@chessninja) November 16, 2020
Am I the only one who thinks that Twitter either needs to ban Trump (@realDonaldTrump) for trying to destroy our democracy, or at the very least that they should change the disclaimers they slap on his tweets.
Perhaps they could get creative. I am all for this: pic.twitter.com/L5f6BRbT4o
— Gerald Weaver (#PrisonTrumpWillBeWayFunnier) (@Gerald_Weaver_) November 16, 2020
— Daily Trix (@DailyTrix) November 18, 2020
Meanwhile, the would-be conspirators are busily flying up each others’… wormholes:
Sebastian Gorka and the Claremont Institute going to war with OAN over which bullshit election conspiracies their followers can believe https://t.co/lKgnQvFdhU
— proudly overusing "cope" (@MenshevikM) November 19, 2020
as far as I can tell the current schism is whether to stick to conspiracies pushed by the Trump administration itself or whether to adopt a QAnon derived theory about a supercomputer, which is leading to some truly laughable respectability politics pic.twitter.com/h5DAb7kAPz
— proudly overusing "cope" (@MenshevikM) November 19, 2020
the absolute funniest shit on here is elder conservatives lecturing Q people about how to check their sources before recommending Rush Limbaugh and Fox
— proudly overusing "cope" (@MenshevikM) November 19, 2020
Late Night Open Thread: Call It the Betty Cracker AmendmentPost + Comments (78)
This post is in: Biden-Harris 2020, Information Warfare, Media, Our Failed Media Experiment
I really, really hate this type of reductive framing where the media (& the 'left') just boil down someone with an impressive record to one single descriptor, which is of course the most negative possible framing.
Basically invalidated all the good accomplishments they've had. https://t.co/UaNwo5Fn8O
— Centrism Fan Acct ? (@Wilson__Valdez) November 17, 2020
Sure, court stenographer Maggie Haberman may have provided four years of comfy-chair interrogation to the Trump Crime Cartel, but now that there will be a Democrat in the White House, the NYTimes is bringing back the snipers. And Politico alum Ken Vogel has been diligently laundering ‘troubling implications’ concerning the Biden family for years now!
like, i very much hate haberman's reputation-laundering shop for ivanka and kushner, but vogel's been an active participant in a full-blown disinformation campaign
— golikehellmachine (@golikehellmachi) November 17, 2020
Never forget Ken Vogel laundered Rudy Giuliani's crazy bullshit to give the Trump Admin pretext to shakedown the Ukrainian president. https://t.co/p0Q5d0QBKb
— CIA Operative (@OpBlackstone) November 17, 2020
Or…
-Journalist who played an integral part in laundering the Russian govt's disinfo operation on our election
or
-Journalist who ambushed an elderly, immigrant mother to write a hit piece on the president of a progressive think tank, who he has a vendetta against(KEN VOGEL)
— Centrism Fan Acct ? (@Wilson__Valdez) November 17, 2020
Be prepared for four to eight years of ‘just raising an important issue’ and ‘but the troubling implications’ from this smarmy little wad…
"There is a story here, we've told some of it, there's more to be told… That said, the way that Rudy is inserting himself into it, is both not helpful I think to Rudy and to Trump… he's getting the facts wrong" – @kenvogel w/ @NicolleDWallace pic.twitter.com/pFOVi56BPU
— Deadline White House (@DeadlineWH) September 20, 2019
This post is in: COVID-19 Coronavirus, Excellent Links, Information Warfare, Our Failed Media Experiment
Party of Death. https://t.co/WWBCGn2i6u
— James Palmer (@BeijingPalmer) November 14, 2020
If your loved ones and/or family have decided that ‘Thanksgiving is too important *not* to celebrate as usual’, it’s probably too late to change their minds. But maybe some gentle advice from, say, the CDC, might at least help them minimize the aftereffects…
The COVID-19 pandemic has been stressful and isolating for many people. Gatherings during the upcoming holidays can be an opportunity to reconnect with family and friends. This holiday season, consider how your holiday plans can be modified to reduce the spread of COVID-19 to keep your friends, families, and communities healthy and safe.
Unfortunately, the COVID-19 epidemic is worsening, and small household gatherings are an important contributor to the rise in COVID-19 cases. CDC offers the following considerations to slow the spread of COVID-19 during small gatherings. These considerations are meant to supplement—not replace—any state, local, territorial, or tribal health and safety laws, rules, and regulations with which all gatherings must comply…
Considerations for Hosting or Attending a Gathering
If you will be hosting a gathering during the holiday season that brings people who live in different households together, follow CDC tips for hosting gatherings. If you will be attending a gathering that someone else is hosting, follow CDC Considerations for Events and Gatherings. Below are some general considerations for hosting a gathering that brings together people from different households. Guests should be aware of these considerations and ask their host what mitigation measures will be in place during the gathering. Hosts should consider the following:Check the COVID-19 infection rates in areas where attendees live on state, local, territorial, or tribal health department websites. Based on the current status of the pandemic, consider if it is safe to hold or attend the gathering on the proposed date… If setting up outdoor seating under a pop-up open air tent, ensure guests are still seated with physical distancing in mind. Enclosed 4-wall tents will have less air circulation than open air tents. If outdoor temperature or weather forces you to put up the tent sidewalls, consider leaving one or more sides open or rolling up the bottom 12” of each sidewall to enhance ventilation while still providing a wind break… Encourage guests to avoid singing or shouting, especially indoors. Keep music levels down so people don’t have to shout or speak loudly to be heard… Provide and/or encourage attendees to bring supplies to help everyone to stay healthy. These include extra masks (do not share or swap with others), hand sanitizer that contains at least 60% alcohol, and tissues. Stock bathrooms with enough hand soap and single use towels. Limit contact with commonly touched surfaces or shared items such as serving utensils. Use touchless garbage cans if available. Use gloves when removing garbage bags or handling and disposing of trash. Wash hands after removing gloves. Plan ahead and ask guests to avoid contact with people outside of their households for 14 days before the gathering. Treat pets as you would other human family members – do not let pets interact with people outside the household.
That last item — dogs and cats can get COVID-19, and while they probably won’t pass it on to humans, it’s only fair to remind guests not to snuggle Rover or Muffy without washing their hands first, and afterwards.
Unfortunately, one of every pandemic’s greatest weapons has been the universal human insistence that ‘MY people are clean and strong; *we* couldn’t possibly carry or spread this plague.’ Also, too many people will tell you — will even believe — that they’ve been ‘totally self-isolated’… except for the housekeeper. Or that visit to the hairdresser. Or their condo’s book club. Or their golf foursome!
If you think a negative test result means you don't have coronavirus, you could be wrong. Here's what you need to know. https://t.co/jHISjjTMPa
— CNN (@CNN) November 17, 2020
People are infectious two days before showing symptoms.
That means you can't tell if someone is sick by looking at them or asking them how they feel.
Stay 6' apart and masked. https://t.co/xfTAoZ8s3x
— COVID19 (@V2019N) November 15, 2020
hello america this is what happened with canadian thanksgiving pic.twitter.com/iZd1Bok4j0
— patrick (@patwmurray) November 15, 2020
Another way to think about these lags is that some of the people who are infected on Thanksgiving will enter the hospital in the middle of December, and the morgue around Christmas. pic.twitter.com/S9kqHW981l
— Ed Yong (@edyong209) November 15, 2020
To be continued…
Thanksgiving 2020: A Superspreader Event for the Whole Family!Post + Comments (227)
This post is in: Glibertarianism, Goddamned Traitors, Information Warfare, Our Failed Media Experiment
WSJ: Hedge fund investor Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah Mercer are financially backing the social media company Parler.
The Mercers previously financed a number of conservative causes, and have not disclosed their involvement with Parlerhttps://t.co/uRW6Ili87F
— Hamza Shaban (@hshaban) November 14, 2020
“Interesting“, as far as it goes, which probably isn’t far enough. I can’t see most of the article, because I’m not gonna buy an exorbitantly expensive Wall Street Journal subscription for pap like this:
As Facebook Inc . and Twitter Inc . have taken a harder line against unsubstantiated claims of a stolen presidential election, prominent conservatives on both platforms have responded with anger and a frequent retort: Follow me on Parler.
Launched in 2018, the libertarian-leaning social network was the most downloaded app on both Android and Apple devices for most of last week, according to data from Google and analytics firm App Annie. Its leaders envision it as a free-speech-focused alternative to the giants of Silicon Valley.
The platform also has some deep-pocketed investors. Rebekah Mercer, daughter of hedge-fund investor Robert Mercer, is among the company’s financial backers, according to people familiar with the matter. The Mercers have previously financed a number of conservative causes…
ICYMI (as you probably did, what with all the more pressing news out there), this breathless scoop comes hard on the heels of a widely circulated twitter thread…
Parler is funded by FSB? This is the most surprising development since the sun came out this morning. https://t.co/Zfyrpyx9Sg
— Slava Malamud (@SlavaMalamud) November 13, 2020
Interesting background on Parler: https://t.co/Re2ThmDigA
— Tanya Eckert Grasser ? (@treg313) November 14, 2020
The Verge adds:
… Parler turned into a kind of de facto home for conservatives’ protests against the election— including the persistent “Stop the Steal” campaign— after the race was called for former Vice President Joe Biden. Several high-profile conservative social media personalities encouraged people to abandon Twitter and Facebook because of their moderation policies, and instead follow them on Parler.
According to the WSJ, the Mercers, known for giving financial support to conservative causes and organizations, including Cambridge Analytica, have not previously revealed their connection to Parler.
In a “parley” (what Parler calls its posts) on Saturday, a user with the handle Rebekah Mercer and a yellow “verified” badge said she and “John,” an apparent reference to Parler CEO John Matze, “started Parler to provide a neutral platform for free speech as our founders intended,” and that “the ever increasing tyranny and hubris of our tech overlords lead the fight against data mining” and online free speech…
As a devout Cynic, I suspect the distinction between Mercer funding and official Soviet funding is very much on the Why buy a cow when milk is so cheap? spectrum, myself. But then, all the most significant capital-L libertarian thought leaders seem to have had a strong Russian influence: Ayn Rand, the Koch brothers, Edward Snowden — it’s a tradition!
Late Night Anti-Social Media Open Thread: Who Funds Parler?Post + Comments (69)
by Adam L Silverman| 147 Comments
This post is in: 2020 Elections, America, Domestic Politics, Information Warfare, Open Threads, Politics, Silverman on Security
While we wait for Vice President and President-Elect presumptive Biden and Senator and Vice President-elect presumptive Harris to begin their event, I wanted to point out Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro’s absolutely excellent visual communication capabilities. Take a look at the picture below and notice what is on the shelf behind and a little bit above his left shoulder:
In the center, in front of the clock is a USPS mail truck. To the right of the truck is Count Von Count from Sesame Street. To the truck’s left, at the extreme left of the shelf, is Sam the Eagle at the presidential podium from The Muppet Show. And between Sam the Eagle and the USPS mail truck, to the left of the clock and above everything else is a Notorious RBG action figure.
Regardless of what AG Shapiro was saying, what he’s communicating here is that under his watch Pennsylvania will count all the mail in ballots in the 2020 election and for president under the watchful eye of the late Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. This is excellent visual communication!
And here’s the video of the media hit. Wait for it… Wait for it…
this teen wins election night 4.0 pic.twitter.com/wzzoyXwMU0
— Justin Sink (@justinsink) November 7, 2020
Well played young Shapiro, well played!
Open thread!
Visual Communication: The Pennsylvania Attorney General Brings His A GamePost + Comments (147)
by Adam L Silverman| 436 Comments
This post is in: 2020 Elections, America, Domestic Politics, Information Warfare, Open Threads, Politics, Silverman on Security
There’s a lot of lamentation going on about how Biden had no coattails. That all the talk of progressive priorities is what caused the Democrats to loose seats in the House and prevented them from gaining/flipping seats in the Senate. This was, apparently, part of some screaming at today’s Democratic House caucus Zoom call and some tweets by AOC and the lying shitbird Waleed Shahid. And, of course, how the pollsters all screwed up once again. While I’ve got a couple of specific points on the pollsters, which I’ll save for the end, here’s what I think got missed and ignored. And it got missed and ignored not just by the pollsters, but also by the modelers: Cook, Sabato, etc.
On Sunday night I wrote this:
The political science PhD part of me, in line with Charlie Cook’s projections, looks at the data and information we have and recognizes the high probability that VP Biden wins without much difficult and the Democrats are able to achieve a 52 seat Senate majority. The low intensity warfare professional in me looks at what’s going on and is exceedingly concerned regardless of what happens on Tuesday.
Let’s leave low intensity warfare professional me out of this, as he’s on solid ground, but I clearly got it wrong. And I got it wrong because Cook got it wrong. And Cook got it wrong because the data he had was wrong. And the data he had was wrong because the assumptions underlying the collection of the data were wrong based on a misreading of what happened in 2018.
What everyone missed is that in 2018 if you were pissed at Trump, uncomfortable with Trump, disliked Trump, were concerned about what Trump was doing and you wanted to cast a protest vote against Trump you could only do so by voting for Democrats and against Republicans. And that’s what caused the 2018 blue wave for the Democrats in the House races. And it’s why it didn’t reappear this time.
It didn’t reappear this time because Trump was on the ballot. So if you are pissed at Trump, uncomfortable with Trump, dislike Trump, are concerned about what Trump is doing and wanted to cast a protest vote against Trump you actually could directly vote against Trump and then go and vote how you normally would, how you’re comfortable voting, which was for all the other Republicans just like you always do because you’re a Republican. That’s your team. That’s your tribe. That’s how you identify. And that’s the lens you understand politics and America through. Yes, this means that all these people angry with Trump who voted against him, but voted for all the other Republicans are completely oblivious to the fact that all of those folks enabled Trump, went along with Trump, embraced Trump, refused to stand up to Trump, refused to cross Trump, and are, therefore, just as bad as Trump. They may in fact be worse because they’re not Trump and therefore should both know and be better.
Congressman Max Rose should never have even gotten close to being elected to Congress from his district in Staten Island. That’s not because Max Rose is a bad member of Congress or a sellout or anything else. It is simply that Max Rose, because he’s a Democrat and because he’s Jewish, is a TERRIBLE fit for that district. It shouldn’t be surprising that Staten Islanders, who would normally only vote for a Republican, could actually protest vote against Trump in 2020 by actually voting against Trump in 2020. And that they were then perfectly willing to go back to voting for the Republican running to unseat Rose. Which is what they did.
What the pollsters missed, what the modelers like Cooke missed, and what, as a result, allowed us all to miss because we were working off of their assumptions and data and models is that there does not appear to have been a major shift among suburban white women, and some suburban white men, from the Republicans to the Democrats because of Trump. What there appears to be is that suburban white women and some suburban white men don’t like Trump and will vote against him if he’s on the ballot. When he’s not, they will vote against Republicans as a protest because they can’t directly vote against him.
This is not a fully original theory. My thinking was prompted by this tweet from Dave Wasserman:
A key factor in House Rs' ability to easily hold onto districts that Trump likely lost last night: in 2018, the only way for suburbanites to take out anger at Trump was down-ballot; this year, they could vote against Trump and still vote for down-ballot Rs they like.
— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) November 4, 2020
I think there is empirical goodness here that we need to keep in mind going forward.
I said up top that I wanted to make a specific point about the pollsters. I read today, actually reread because I saw someone flag a 2012 article on election technology, polling disparities, and election rigging, and this stood out at me:
The statistically anomalous shifting of votes to the conservative right has become so pervasive in post-HAVA America that it now has a name of its own. Experts call it the “red shift.”
The Election Defense Alliance (EDA) is a nonprofit organization specializing in election forensics—a kind of dusting for the fingerprints of electronic theft. It is joined in this work by a coalition of independent statisticians, who have compared decades of computer-vote results to exit polls, tracking polls, and hand counts. Their findings show that when disparities occur, they benefit Republicans and right-wing issues far beyond the bounds of probability. “We approach electoral integrity with a nonpartisan goal of transparency,” says EDA executive director Jonathan Simon. “But there is nothing nonpartisan about the patterns we keep finding.” Simon’s verdict is confirmed by David Moore, a former vice president and managing editor of Gallup: “What the exit polls have consistently shown is stronger Democratic support than the election results.”
Wouldn’t American voters eventually note the constant disparity between poll numbers and election outcomes, and cry foul? They might—except that polling numbers, too, are being quietly shifted. Exit-poll data is provided by the National Election Pool, a corporate-media consortium consisting of the three major television networks plus CNN, Fox News, and the Associated Press. The NEP relies in turn on two companies, Edison Research and Mitofsky International, to conduct and analyze the actual polling. However, few Americans realize that the final exit polls on Election Day are adjusted by the pollsters—in other words, weighted according to the computerized-voting-machine totals.
When challenged on these disparities, pollsters often point to methodological flaws. Within days of the 2004 election, Warren Mitofsky (who invented exit polls in 1967) appeared on television to unveil what became known as the “reluctant Bush responder” theory: “We suspect that the main reason was that the Kerry voters were more anxious to participate in our exit polls than the Bush voters.” But some analysts and pollsters insist this theory is entirely unproven. “I don’t think the pollsters have really made a convincing case that it’s solely methodological,” Moore told me.
In Moore’s opinion, the NEP could resolve the whole issue by making raw, unadjusted, precinct-level data available to the public. “Our great, free, and open media are concealing data so that it cannot be analyzed,” Moore charges. Their argument that such data is proprietary and would allow analysts to deduce which votes were cast by specific individuals is, Moore insists, “specious at best.” He adds: “They have a communal responsibility to clarify whether there is a vote miscount going on. But so far there’s been no pressure on them to do so.”
Some argue that the Democratic victories in 2006 and 2008 disprove the existence of the red shift. However, this may be a misinterpretation of complex political upheavals that occurred in each of those election years.
While Democrats won a majority in the House of Representatives in 2006, and the White House in 2008, postelection analyses did in fact suggest extensive red-shift rigging. But in both election cycles, these efforts simply failed to overcome eleventh-hour events so negative that they drastically undercut the projected wins for the G.O.P.
In 2006, it was the exposure of Republican representative Mark Foley’s sexual advances toward male congressional pages, and the long-standing cover-up of his behavior by G.O.P. leadership. The scandal swirling around the outwardly homophobic Foley broke in a very ugly and public way, engulfing the entire party and causing a free fall in its polling numbers. The Democratic margin in the Cook Generic Congressional Ballot poll, which had been at 9 percent in early October, jumped to 26 percent by the week of the election.
The collapse of Lehman Brothers months before the 2008 elections had a similar effect on John McCain’s numbers. Pre-election polls showed that the American public blamed the Republicans for the imploding financial markets. “These political sea changes swamped a red shift that turned out to be under-calibrated,” argues Jonathan Simon, who speculates that Barack Obama actually won by a historic landslide, driven by an overwhelming backlash against the policies of the Bush Administration.
There’s a lot more important, solid, and infuriating information at the link! I think the take away is that there has not just been a problem with the professional polling, both in the run up to elections and the exit polling, that is reported in the news media and that is being relied on by everyone to understand what the dynamics are and what is going on, but that the problem is because the pollsters are cooking their own data so it doesn’t make it look like their data is wrong. No one trying to do good faith modeling or projections can do so if the data they are getting is itself misinformation.
A penultimate point about how the reporting of the results is being done. The national news media, especially the campaigning and political reporters have defaulted to their traditional and comfortable framing. If PA, WI, MI, and GA had been allowed to count mail in and early vote ballots like Florida or Ohio are, then by 1 AM at the latest on Wednesday morning we’d be reading about Biden’s historic win, with more of the popular vote than even Obama, that restored the blue wall in the midwest, and that GA had turned purple or was on the cusp of it. But because it’s dragged out, even the best reporting teams that were warning everyone not to be concerned if we didn’t know anything until Thursday or Friday, have now all reverted to horse race reporting, the Democrats are in disarray, why couldn’t Biden do better framing. In reality, Biden did amazing, but the narrative must be observed!!!
The final point I’ll make is that the Senate is still in play, even if the path for Democrats is narrow. Despite everyone being loath to call the Arizona race for Mark Kelly, the margin is too great for McSally to overtake and defeat him. This leaves four Senate seats outstanding: Alaska, both the Georgia seats, and North Carolina. Alaska, even if we didn’t have acknowledged and recognized issues with polling, is notoriously hard to poll. Dr. Gross does have a path to flip that seat, but I have no idea how probable that might be and I don’t think anyone else being honest does. While I’d like to see the Democrats take both the Georgia seats, I think the likelihood is that Warnock defeats Loeffler and Perdue narrowly hangs on, but Ossoff has run better than I think anyone expected, so the seat is in play. As for North Carolina, the state stopped reporting updates because of the Federal court rulings and agreements about how to handle the ballots that are allowed to come in after election day. It is possible that Tillis’s lead has grown, that it has eroded, or that nothing has really changed at all. But we won’t know until next week. The goal for the Democrats is now a 50-50 Senate where they get the majority because a Vice President Harris breaks all the ties. But it is also probable that McConnell maintains a 51 or 52 seat majority. If that happens, expect Schumer to offer Murkowski, Romney, and even Collins whatever they want to not go along with McConnell’s obstructionism.
Open thread!
PS: I told you all for over two months that unless Biden was up by at least 6, if not 10 points in the final Florida polling he was going to lose Florida by 1 to 2 points because there’s something funky going on with the polling in Florida that I’ve noticed as a pattern over the years. I am sorry to write that my concerns were correct.
Marking Beliefs To Market: What I and Everyone Else Missed Or IgnoredPost + Comments (436)