The Swamp

brian wrote: ↑Wed Mar 21, 2018 3:49 pm Iraq: 15 Years Later

Definitely worth a read.

Jesus. That was sobering.

More controversial content from that mainstay of the "intellectual dark web", Joe Rogan!

(Pretty obvious NYT directed orange font there.)

rass wrote: ↑Mon Feb 11, 2019 4:07 pm On Chris Christie (fuck that dude)

Hilarious.

So Let Me Finish ends up being a furious allegory about the perils of not being as smart as you think you are.

That’s an interesting piece because I think the White House response to the virus is driving a lot of what we’ve seen out of Bernie lately. I will say this for the umpteenth time - I accept the argument that there’s probably not a huge difference between Biden and Bernie vs Trump when you add up the pros and cons but I think there’s probably a perception difference in middle America (fair or not) because of their unsophistication politically so this shitshow is really driving home the criticality of beating Trump in November. A virus that affects everyone regardless of income (for the most part) does the trick.

Man, if Matt Taibbi was his campaign manager, that would've been great. The way he just cuts through the bullshit and tells it like it is makes me happy. Especially this:

One doesn’t need a study like the one done by Harvard grad student Jeff Winchell to prove there’s nothing exceptional about Bernie’s online following. Anyone who’s been to a Sanders event knows the “Bro” narrative is a crock. The prototypical Sanders supporter is a young working parent overwhelmed by student or medical debt. They are women as often as men, and tend to be following Sanders in the first place because they’ve done everything by the book (including voting for traditional Democrats), yet are still in a hole. These are people with real problems, people who need help.

And the points about Warren & Maddow and Tapper were great too.

PEOPLE ONLINE BAD. APOLOGIZE FOR MEAN WORDS FROM DIRTBAG TRAPO COMMUNITY, BERNIE.

He's far more eloquent than me. But yea, total joke.

Johnnie wrote: ↑Sun Mar 15, 2020 4:54 am Man, if Matt Taibbi was his campaign manager, that would've been great. The way he just cuts through the bullshit and tells it like it is makes me happy. Especially this:

One doesn’t need a study like the one done by Harvard grad student Jeff Winchell to prove there’s nothing exceptional about Bernie’s online following. Anyone who’s been to a Sanders event knows the “Bro” narrative is a crock. The prototypical Sanders supporter is a young working parent overwhelmed by student or medical debt. They are women as often as men, and tend to be following Sanders in the first place because they’ve done everything by the book (including voting for traditional Democrats), yet are still in a hole. These are people with real problems, people who need help.

And the points about Warren & Maddow and Tapper were great too.

PEOPLE ONLINE BAD. APOLOGIZE FOR MEAN WORDS FROM DIRTBAG TRAPO COMMUNITY, BERNIE.

He's far more eloquent than me. But yea, total joke.

This ties into the broader theme of Taibbi’s piece but part of why the fictitious “Bernie Bro” narrative is so maddening is because Sanders himself does not go negative much at all on other Democratic colleagues. In 2016, he famously said something like “we’ve heard enough about the damn emails” during one of the debates to explain why he wanted his debates with Clinton to be about policy. (Too bad Comey didn’t get the memo.) He hasn’t said a single negative thing about Warren even though, as Taibbi pointed out, it’s absurd that she’s using “mean Tweets” as a pretext to help Biden and effectively doom the chances of a progressive candidacy. And he sure as hell won’t call out Biden’s corrupt son, corrupt brother, incessant confusion and evident cognitive decline during the debate tonight. It’s just that powerful people who aren’t used to being challenged view his criticism of the system from which they’ve benefited as tantamount to personal attacks.

That wasn't the worst of it

Ha, the CIS vs CISA thing is something I didn't expect to see in there. I work with those two acronyms every day. I hadn't ever thought about how similar they are. They are two completely separate organizations, although they both deal with cybersecurity policy, so I get why a journalist would mix them up. Initially. Anyone doing good work should have quickly figured out that they're not the same.

I like the idea of independent journalism, where decisions on what to run or how to frame a story isn't affected by advertisers, but the downside is that former journalists can fire off Tweets without fact checking, researching or having an editor review what they say. It's disturbing how little he seems to care that his facts are wrong.

ETA: And while I don't understand what CIS or CISA are, Taibbi shows he doesn't either. How fucking lazy to add the "A" in brackets because he doesn't know what the A stands for (he used CIS[A] when he meant CIS). Clearly he knew the acronym was off, but he was too lazy to look it up.

I think you guys are giving Taibbi way too much credit but holy fuck it's refreshing to see that kind of journalism from Hasan.