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Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Something seems odd about that, but i have been drinking.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

… down to kool-aid drinkers and next of kin at the trump White House

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

Shelter in place is one thing. Shelter in pants is quite another.

The math demands it!

We need fewer warriors in public service and more gardeners.

The revolution will be supervised.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

Peak wingnut was a lie.

Too inconsequential to be sued

You are either for trump or for democracy. Pick one.

Fuck if i know. i just get yelled at when i try it.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

Militantly superior in their own minds…

Consistently wrong since 2002

The willow is too close to the house.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

Historically it is a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

Gastritis broke my calculator.

Han shot first.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

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You are here: Home / Archives for Politics / Information Warfare

Information Warfare

Thanksgiving 2020: A Superspreader Event for the Whole Family!

by Anne Laurie|  November 17, 202010:32 am| 227 Comments

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…
Thanksgiving 2020:  A Superspreader Event for the Whole Family!

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…

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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)

    Late Night Anti-Social Media Open Thread: Who Funds Parler?

    by Anne Laurie|  November 14, 202011:31 pm| 69 Comments

    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…

    show full post on front page

    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)

    Visual Communication: The Pennsylvania Attorney General Brings His A Game

    by Adam L Silverman|  November 6, 202010:06 pm| 147 Comments

    This post is in: America, Domestic Politics, Election 2020, 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:

    Visual Communication: The Pennsylvania Attorney General Brings His A Game

    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)

    Marking Beliefs To Market: What I and Everyone Else Missed Or Ignored

    by Adam L Silverman|  November 5, 20209:24 pm| 436 Comments

    This post is in: America, Domestic Politics, Election 2020, 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)

    Demoralization Is the Point

    by Adam L Silverman|  November 1, 20209:09 pm| 222 Comments

    This post is in: America, Domestic Politics, Election 2020, Information Warfare, Open Threads, Politics, Silverman on Security

    The whole point of all the chaos that the President, his campaign, his surrogates, and his supporters are calling for, and the actual chaos that he, his surrogates, and his supporters are creating, are all intended to do one thing: demoralize everyone. In the table below you can see the Soviet doctrinal model for subverting a state and society. Demoralization is one of the major components. Among other actions, it includes subverting the legislative process to subvert the judicial system and the rule of law. Part of the reason that Senator McConnell jammed Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination through in under six weeks just before the election is to demoralize the majority of Americans. It is why he’s already stated publicly that during the lame duck, regardless of the results of the election, he’s not going to bring a COVID relief package to the floor. Rather, all he’s going to do is fill the remaining Federal judicial vacancies in order to achieve a legislative demoralization two for: further packing the courts with Leonard Leo chosen reactionaries and extremists and ensuring that Americans don’t get the help and assistance they need to survive the pandemic.

    show full post on front page

    Demoralization Is the Point 1

    The domestic terror attacks on the Biden-Harris campaign bus and the staffers accompanying it in their own vehicles in Texas, promising to give Senator Harris a Texas Welcome, which is reminiscent of what conservative Texans announced they would give President Kennedy in 1963 is intended to demoralize you. Domestic terrorism that appears to have originated with Don Jr. instigating it via his social media accounts. The militia threat in Rome, GA that led to Georgia Democrats cancelling their rally there today is intended to demoralize you. Thethe closing of the Garden State Parkway in NJ, the Mario Cuomo Bridge in New York, and several other major roadways in the northeast are all intended to demoralize people. As are the President’s statements that his lawyers will get right to work as soon as the polls close in Pennsylvania on Tuesday night. And the statements by deadbeat dad and ambulatory thumb Jason Miller on ABC’s Sunday news talk show this morning. The ever more bizarre attempts to smear VP Biden with ever wilder and more bizarre allegations about his surviving son by Giuliani, Bannon, Don Jr., Guo Wengui’s network, and others are intended to demoralize you.

    Just as the President’s, his surrogates’, and his supporters’ attempts to make it so that nothing is true, therefore anything, everything, and nothing is possible are intended to demoralize, so too are the activities, actions, and statements heading into election day. And regardless of the outcome of the election, whether they are able to make projections and calls early or whether it takes several days because things seem close on Tuesday and we have to wait for the ballots to be counted, the attempts to demoralize will continue through January 20, 2021. The President, his campaign, the Republican Party, the now clearly misnamed conservative movement, the President’s surrogates, and the President’s supporters want you demoralized. They want you on edge. They want you scared. Because they want the demoralization and the fear to immobilize you.

    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.

    Things are going to be unsettled, uncomfortable, unpleasant, and dangerous no matter what happens on Tuesday night. Especially if what the data tells us is going to happen happens and VP Biden wins. The President, his key subordinates in his administration, in Congress, on the Federal courts, in state governments, his surrogates, and his supporters will ramp up their destructive rhetoric and, in some cases, behavior. Not because it will somehow undo the results of the election, but because in reality they actually hate America; especially the real promise and ideals of America. Just as they hate the vast majority of Americans. And if they can’t control America and rule it and over the vast majority of Americans, then they’ll try to see it damaged so no one else can.

    I know the next 120 hours, the next five days, is going to seem like an eternity. An eternity fraught with danger and full of stress. But they only win if we actually become demoralized. America doesn’t belong to them. They don’t own it. They don’t get to control it. And they don’t get to rule it or anyone in it.

    So compartmentalize. Do whatever you have to do for self care. And keep doing whatever you’ve been doing to make sure everyone you know is voting and everyone they know is voting.

    Edited To Add (ETA) 9:25 PM EST:

    I just want to add one comment within the body of the post. Everyone needs to stop freaking out and knee jerking about which demographic is turning out in which ways for Biden versus 2016 or 2012 or 2008. The coalition that VP Biden has built, as well as that has coalesced around him, is not a recreation of President Obama’s 2008 or 2012 coalitions. Nor is it an attempt to recreate Secretary Clinton’s 2016 coalition and then expand it in the demographics that underperformed for her vis a vis for President Obama in 2008 and 2012. Rather, the coalition that VP Biden built was, as I forecast back in January 2019, initially from the left through to the center. With the addition of the NeverTrumpers, whether former Republicans or Republicans who recognize the threat that the Republic is in and are doing the right thing by crossing over and supporting VP Biden’s candidacy, and VP Biden’s ability to pull in non-college educated more rural and blue collar whites, especially white men, tells us something important. What VP Biden has built in terms of an electoral coalition is, for all intents and purposes, a national unity coalition. It now runs from the left anchored by Senator Sanders and all but his most rabid supporters all the way out to the center right with a number of Republicans for Biden, The Lincoln Project folks and their supporters, and at least half of the National Security Leaders for Biden*. This is something almost unseen in modern American political history. And it is important to remember just how broad, wide, and deep VP Biden’s coalition is when you see, hear, and/or read reporting on some proportion of what would normally be a Democratic demographic not turning out in the numbers like they did in 2016, 2012, or 2008. So don’t freak out. Realize just what the Biden coalition is and what it represents.

    Open thread!

    * Full disclosure: I am advising one of the original 3 star (lieutenant general) signatories of the National Security Leaders for Biden letter. I served as his senior civilian advisor before he retired and have been providing political, strategy, and policy analysis to him since early in the summer. This is a voluntary service, I am not being paid.

     

    Demoralization Is the PointPost + Comments (222)

    Late Night Open Thread: TUCKER CARLSON WILL NOT BE OUT-CLOWNED!

    by Anne Laurie|  October 30, 20201:15 am| 67 Comments

    This post is in: Information Warfare, Open Threads, Proud to Be A Democrat, Republican Stupidity, Republican Venality, Our Failed Media Experiment

    I don't want to be too snarky but Trump needs to close a big polling deficit and this is the message on a day with 80k new COVID cases and a 940 point decline in the Dow. https://t.co/aJ4kPawfmb

    — Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) October 29, 2020

    Adam’s already done a sercon (serious, constructive) post on the merits of Carlson’s Very Important Schpy Schtuff, but I want y’all to know that Joe Biden’s social media team is skilled.

    We disagree with Tucker Carlson on the issues, but no one should ever lose their mail. Joe will make sure the USPS receives the funding it needs to prevent this from happening, and end Trump and DeJoy's efforts to sabotage it so that people like Tucker can get their mail on time.

    — Biden | Harris War Room (Text JOE to 30330) (@BidenWarRoom) October 29, 2020

    show full post on front page

    Of course, once his ‘dog ate my big reveal’ story was shown for the shabby farce it was, the pretense was dropped…

    UPS has found Tucker Carlson’s mystery package of Biden papers, suggesting it wasn’t stolen by the deep state after all. https://t.co/5iYPG9SDMx

    — Will Sommer (@willsommer) October 29, 2020

    Last night, Tucker was claiming the mystery package’s disappearance was proof someone was spying on his text messages. Starting to think that’s not the case!

    — Will Sommer (@willsommer) October 29, 2020

    But in the interim, much entertainment was had:

    Maybe Trump's postal inspectors thought it was a ballot. https://t.co/x5uC98U5F0

    — Mig Greengard (@chessninja) October 29, 2020

    Need to find that DeJoy fella posthaste…

    — The Great War & Modern Memory (@ps9714) October 29, 2020

    This is – and I do not say this lightly – the dumbest fucking thing this dumb motherfucker has ever broadcast.

    The Boya from La Jolla alleges his team had critical documents but didn’t bother making a copy and just dropped them in a FedEx where nefarious things occurred!

    1/ https://t.co/UmxRLCilDs

    — The Hoarse Whisperer (@TheRealHoarse) October 29, 2020

    why would tucker ship a bunch of documents via delivery when he could just scan them and post them on stormfront like usual.

    — the ribald sportsman (@CalmSporting) October 29, 2020

    so if I have this straight someone is reading tucker’s texts about fed-exing a nondescript envelope cross country and within minutes covertly infiltrating the fed-ex logistics chain and surreptitiously locating then stealing the contents of an envelope but leaving the envelope https://t.co/PVREk2nhcQ

    — kilgore trout, tucker carlson’s mailman (@KT_So_It_Goes) October 29, 2020

    the tucker stolen mail thing is absolutely a heat check, like a guy hoisting three pointers from further and further away to see if they keep dropping. his deranged fans will buy it, and he’ll hoist more shots even further out.

    in short, it will get worse

    — the ribald sportsman (@CalmSporting) October 29, 2020

    this is like your third reminder this week that there is no one in america who holds as much contempt for the average republican voter's intelligence than the average professional republican, and it's not even close

    — GET FUCKING MAD ABOUT IT MACHINE (@golikehellmachi) October 29, 2020

    Does Tucker realize how dumb this makes him look?

    pic.twitter.com/pIUSHLuor0

    — Molly Jong-Fast🏡 (@MollyJongFast) October 30, 2020

    Leaving this here for absolutely no reason: ""Fox persuasively argues, that given Mr. Carlson's reputation, any reasonable viewer 'arrive[s] with an appropriate amount of skepticism' about the statement he makes."https://t.co/BYJ9tfuB43

    — Kendra "Gloom is My Beat" Pierre-Louis (@KendraWrites) October 29, 2020

    Late Night Open Thread: TUCKER CARLSON WILL NOT BE OUT-CLOWNED!Post + Comments (67)

    Regarding the Alleged Hunter Biden Materials: This Is Some of the Most Amateur Looking Garbage I’ve Ever Seen

    by Adam L Silverman|  October 29, 20206:59 pm| 124 Comments

    This post is in: America, China, Domestic Politics, Election 2020, Foreign Affairs, Information Warfare, Open Threads, Politics, Russia

    Since Tucker Carlson, the host of the White Power Hour of Glower Hour, has been told that UPS has found whatever documents and materials he was bitching were stolen last night have been found and will be delivered, I want to make a couple of quick points about the alleged Hunter Biden materials. These will be in line with my previous remarks, but I wanted to add a few things before Tucker starts peddling doctored documents, misinformation, and agitprop on the air tonight.

    Cole texted me to ask if I’d seen the repository of alleged Hunter Biden pictures, videos, and emails posted on a site owned by Guo Wengui. I’ve now gone through the materials and here are my takeaways:

    1. These are some of the most amateur looking materials I’ve ever seen!
    2. Some of the pictures are legitimately of Hunter Biden.
    3. Some of the pictures may be of Hunter Biden.
    4. Some of the pictures are clearly altered/adjusted.
    5. Some of the pictures, specifically the vast majority that purport to show actual or simulated sex acts, could be of anybody. Some of these only show the face of one person so it is unclear who the other person is. A lot of them don’t show anyone’s faces, so there is no way to tell who the pictures are of.
    6. The picture of “Malia Obama’s credit card” is most certainly not of Malia Obama’s credit card.
    7. There are NO pictures depicting sex or simulated sex acts with minors/juveniles.
    8. There are several pictures with blurred out faces of women, including one with a blurred out upper body, that have text box overlays asking “are these underage?” Based on the visual evidence presented, there is no way to know, but if they are then everyone in possession of the unaltered photos is in a lot of trouble.
    9. In all the other pictures showing sex or simulated sex acts, the women are clearly not underage.
    10. The picture of the threesome/simulated threesome, which has a text box overlay asking if the women are Malia Obama and one of Hunter Biden’s daughters, is CLEARLY NOT A PICTURE WITH MALIA OBAMA AND/OR HUNTER BIDEN’S DAUGHTER IN IT!!!!! Frankly, I’m not even sure Hunter Biden is in the picture. Specifically, I’m not sure that the picture is not altered.
    11. The couple of network analysis charts are absolute crap. Also, they’re captioned in Chinese, which doesn’t help as my Chinese is limited to martial arts terms. And menu items.
    12. The few emails posted, like the emails published by The New York Post, are dead images. There’s no metadata, so know way to demonstrate their provenance. This implies to me they’re not legit. The same for the photos, though they all have text books with the alleged date, time, and location of where the pictures were taken. But here too, there’s no way to verify any of that.
    13. I did not watch the videos because based on the photos, I’m sure that a few will be of Hunter and some will be doctored, most likely by deep faking them.

    This stuff is just incredibly amateurish. They are clearly not intended to persuade anyone, let alone really convince law enforcement or intelligence personnel to take them seriously. Rather, they’re intended to push misinformation and agitprop out through outlets like Carlson’s show on Fox News, The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, and The New York Post so the President and his key surrogates like Rudy Giuliani can refer to them at rallies and during media hits. And Don Jr. can shitpost them on Twitter.

    And now a little bit about Guo Wengui. Guo’s back story is that he’s in self imposed exile from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) because he pissed of Xi and Xi wants him back for what would be a political trial. As a result, Guo took his billions and fled to the US where he’s embraced the hardest of the hard right within the GOP, the conservative movement, and Trumpworld. Guo’s thrown his money around to them as well, which is why he’s funding Bannon’s operations and why Bannon was arrested on Guo’s yacht. They appear to have an initiative they call the New Chinese Federation, which is tied to the Guo backed website that is now posting the alleged Hunter Biden material.

    While it is possible that Guo’s story is legit, it is just as likely, and in my professional assessment highly likely, that the story is a cover story*. It’s just too good to be true. Just as the Russians sent a somewhat physically attractive young woman to penetrate the GOP and conservative movement using both gun rights and white Christian religious freedom as the cover story, a cover story that was catnip to the folks at the NRA, other shooting organizations, the National Prayer Breakfast folks (C Street/the Family/the Fellowship), and other white Christian conservative organizations, I think Guo’s cover story is engineered to be equally irresistible.

    The Trumpified GOP and conservative movement have over the past four years stopped talking about, as in literally have stopped using the terms China or the PRC and started screaming about the Chinese Communist Party, the CCP, and/or the ChiComs. This is language used for the boundary maintenance of GOP/conservative/Trumpworld identity by allowing for easy identification of those who speak the right words (the literal definition of political correctness that came out of the crypto-fascist movement of Father Coughlin).

    Guo’s story seems to be created to be equally irresistible to the Republican Party, the conservative movement, and Trumpworld and to capitalize off of this weird Republican, conservative, and Trumpworld reimagining of the PRC. Just as Butina’s cover story of the emergence of a 2nd amendment absolutism movement in Russia, which is implausible if you know anything about Russia, was designed to be irresistible to the GOP and the conservative movement in the US. When you combine the cover story with all the money he has to share, just as Butina managed to have money to share, you’ve got what appears to be a not for cover operation to penetrate the Republican Party, the conservative movement, and Trumpworld.

    It is important to remember, that despite the President’s statements, as well as those by former Acting DNI Grennell and current DNI Ratcliffe, as well as other of the President’s surrogates, Xi does want to see the President reelected:

    Donald Trump has argued frequently of late that China is rooting for Joe Biden come November’s U.S. presidential election. In Beijing, however, officials have come around to support four more years of Trump.

    Interviews with nine current and former Chinese officials point to a shift in sentiment in favor of the sitting president, even though he has spent much of the past four years blaming Beijing for everything from U.S. trade imbalances to Covid-19. The chief reason? A belief that the benefit of the erosion of America’s postwar alliance network would outweigh any damage to China from continued trade disputes and geopolitical instability.

    While the officials shared concerns that U.S.-China tensions would rise regardless of who was in the White House, they broke largely into camps of those who emphasized geopolitical gains and those who were concerned about trade ties. Biden, the former vice president, was viewed as a traditional Democrat who would seek to shore up the U.S.’s tattered multilateral relationships and tamp down trade frictions.

    “If Biden is elected, I think this could be more dangerous for China, because he will work with allies to target China, whereas Trump is destroying U.S. alliances,” said Zhou Xiaoming, a former Chinese trade negotiator and former deputy representative in Geneva. Four current officials echoed that sentiment, saying many in the Chinese government believed a Trump victory could help Beijing by weakening what they saw as Washington’s greatest asset for checking China’s widening influence.

    Having a catspaw – Guo – with an irresistible to Republicans and conservatives cover story and lots of money to spread around on those same Republicans and conservatives pet projects, including smearing VP Biden to weaken his election chances, makes sense. It also explains why Russian agitprop that was seeded in 2014 to dirty up VP Biden, Secretary Kerry, and VP Cheney, is now being pushed by a self exiled ultra-wealthy Chinese national who has ingratiated himself with and is funding Steve Bannon and other key Trumpworld figures.

    We are off the map and through the looking glass.

    Open thread!

    * The link is to a lawsuit by a private US research firm that Guo had hired to dig up dirt on Chinese nationals in the US that Guo believed to be working for the PRC. However, in the lawsuit that US research firm alleges that Guo was actually having them try to dig up dirt on Chinese working for the US government under false allegations that they were working for the PRC. The case was ultimately dismissed.

    Regarding the Alleged Hunter Biden Materials: This Is Some of the Most Amateur Looking Garbage I’ve Ever SeenPost + Comments (124)

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