…triangulation [DOT 11/7/24]

…ok…I should probably understand this by now

It’s possible for two conflicting ideas to be true at once.

And so it is with the mainstream media’s unrelenting focus on Joe Biden’s mental acuity, following his terrible debate performance earlier this month.

First truth: the president’s stumble and the political fallout that followed is a huge, consequential news story that deserves a lot of coverage.

Second truth: the media coverage is overkill – not only too much in quantity and too breathless in tone, but also taking up so much oxygen that a story even more important is shoved to the back burner.

…probably coming back to this

…but when the man has only been saying “I’m in it & I’m staying in”…has the fundraising coffers to match…& as @clevernamehere2 mentioned the other day (iirc) any sudden shift to bickering about a candidate that isn’t him or the lady that’s been the understudy for a term spurns those coffers along with what you’d think was some important representative interests in the likely voter stakes…gotta be honest…feels like nance might have come off a tad hypocritical?

“It’s up to the president to decide if he is going to run. We’re all encouraging him to make that decision, because time is running short,” Pelosi said in an interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” when she was asked whether Biden had her support to be the head of the Democratic ticket.

…if you’re still encouraging a guy to “make that decision” long into a timeline where he’s been saying he made his “because time is running short” then frankly I’m not sure I agree with NBC that it counts as “stopping short” of much one way or another…although I suppose they did acknowledge that if it did it was suggesting he should stay in that it stopped short of

“But he’s beloved, he is respected, and people want him to make that decision. Not me,” she said.

Asked whether she wants him to run, Pelosi said: “I want him to do whatever he decides to do, and that’s — that’s the way it is. Whatever he decides, we go with.”

Nancy Pelosi stops short of saying Biden should stay in the race, says ‘time is running short’ for him to decide [NBC]

…weird the way this stuff plays out…we got the most establishment guy to ever run…or at least shuffle…for the thing & the poster lady for not rocking the boat is shaking the camera like a lo-fi “earthquake” moment in a b-movie…while the “most likely to capsize the party if elected” lot’s poster child…is…err…what’s that now?

Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez introduced articles of impeachment against the conservative US supreme court justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito on Wednesday over the justices’ “pattern of refusal to recuse from consequential matters before the court”.

…I mean…you can call it performative, I guess

The articles of impeachment are unlikely to gain traction in the US House, which is controlled by Republicans. The effort follows calls from two US senators, Sheldon Whitehouse and Ron Wyden, for the US attorney general to appoint a special counsel to investigate potential criminal violations of federal ethics and tax laws by Thomas.

…but…& I get that everyone knows this part…but sometimes I think maybe it’s useful to remember that it being “normal” is…well…completely at odds with the way shit is supposed to work…which is…unsurprisingly…why it seems on cursory examination to mostly not work

“Justice Thomas and Alito’s repeated failure over decades to disclose that they received millions of dollars in gifts from individuals with business before the court is explicitly against the law. And their refusal to recuse from the specific matters and cases before the court in which their benefactors and spouses are implicated represents nothing less than a constitutional crisis,” Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat from New York, said in a statement.

…& the thing is…I can see where it might be…not a great move on nance’s part to loudly imply the answer from joe she’s looking for…pretty much as clearly as I can see how throwing those articles the senate’s way is pissing into the same wind from the same misbegotten collection of windsocks & windbags

Senate Republicans block Democratic bill codifying Roe v. Wade abortion protections [NBC]

…which does get them on the record in a few ways…which would count a lot more if folks set more store by that kind of tally…but…of course…they don’t…seemingly…but…I dunno…maybe it’s just that I don’t hang out with enough fans of the kool-aid in question…but…I can’t help but suspect actually quite a lot of ’em do…& checks & balances are up there with amendment-conferred rights in the sacred cows listings for the US…so the part where a bunch of lifetime-appointees who can’t be balanced & are immune from censure or removal ruled in a fashion that put the law under extreme torque that anyone who’d ever been elected to the office of president could do no wrong provided the wrong they undeniably did was official…stinks of so much concentrated self-interest that it can’t be ignored

The resolution filed against Thomas contains three articles of impeachment. The first focuses on his failure to disclose gifts from Crow. The second two involve his refusal to recuse himself from cases connected to his wife.
[…]
Ocasio-Cortez filed two articles of impeachment against Alito. One focuses on his failure to disclose luxury travel and the other on his refusal to recuse himself from January 6 cases.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jul/10/aoc-articles-of-impeachment

…so…at the risk of once more sounding like I spend my days in the pursuit of sheet-aluminium millinery…cui bono?

Russia’s election influence operations, which include covert social media accounts and encrypted direct messaging channels, are targeting key voter groups in swing states to exploit political divisions in the U.S. and erode support for Ukraine in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion, officials with the Office of the Director National Intelligence, or ODNI, told reporters.

Asked whether Russia’s information campaign is trying to boost or undermine one of the presidential candidates, an ODNI official said: “We have not observed a shift in Russia’s preferences for the presidential race from past elections, given the role the U.S. is playing with regard to Ukraine and broader policy toward Russia.”

In its assessments of previous elections dating to 2016, the intelligence community concluded that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime sought to sway American public opinion in favor of Donald Trump’s candidacy and denigrate the Democratic Party and its presidential nominees.

…it’s not like this hasn’t been going on for years…so it really shouldn’t have a tinfoil echo to it

The Justice Department said Tuesday that Russian actors had created an artificial intelligence-enhanced social media bot farm to spread disinformation in the U.S. and abroad. The U.S., Canada and the Netherlands issued a cybersecurity joint advisory warning companies about the Russian social media bot farm and how to identify the technology it uses.

Russia, China and Iran are the “Big Three” players when it comes to election influence efforts, the ODNI official said. “Russia is a pre-eminent threat, Iran is a chaos agent, and China is holding fire on the presidential race,” the official said.

“We are beginning to see Russia target specific voter demographics, promote divisive narratives and denigrate specific politicians. Moscow seeks to shape electoral outcomes, undermine electoral integrity and amplify domestic divisions,” the ODNI official said.

“To accomplish this, Moscow is using a variety of approaches to bolster its messaging and lend an air of authenticity to its efforts. This includes outsourcing its efforts to commercial firms to hide its hand and laundering narratives through influential U.S. voices,” the official said.

…& for all the manifest failings of the likes of newsweek or the NYT…it’s still true that if the shit the folks afeared of the US deep state consider articles of faith were similarly true…they wouldn’t still be around to complain about

Russia outlaws the Moscow Times, calling it ‘undesirable’ [Guardian]

…but…eh…those people don’t care about that kind of subtle nuance…must be tough to go through life having to walk the walk that anything short of a frying pan to the face demands feigned ignorance but I guess it makes ’em hardy?

In Taiwan’s elections in January, operatives most likely linked to the Chinese government posted dozens of videos online featuring AI-generated newscasters describing purported scandals about Taiwan’s president at the time, the official said. And in India’s recent elections, millions of people clicked on AI-generated ads purporting to show Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other politicians, both living and dead, talking about controversial issues, the official added.

…there’s more to anything about a place as huge as india than a bunch of reductive headlines…but…we all know how long these already run…so let’s reduce that part to one of those

Why is Modi sucking up to Putin? It’s simple and cynical: China and oil [Guardian]

…& get on to the part where the active measures arguably lapped the candidates

U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies are also tracking information operations that are not necessarily directly tied to the election but illustrate how foreign governments try to seize on certain issues to worsen divisions in the U.S. or embarrass the U.S. government.

In an example of “election adjacent” information warfare, Iran has sought to amplify domestic criticism of U.S. policy on the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, National Intelligence Director Avril Haines said in a statement earlier Tuesday.

“In recent weeks, Iranian government actors have sought to opportunistically take advantage of ongoing protests regarding the war in Gaza, using a playbook we’ve seen other actors use over the years,” Haines said. “We have observed actors tied to Iran’s government posing as activists online, seeking to encourage protests and even providing financial support to protesters.”

Haines acknowledged that Americans “in good faith” take part in protests over the conflict in Gaza and that freedom to express diverse opinions is “essential to our democracy.” She added that “it is also important to warn of foreign actors who seek to exploit our debate for their own purposes.”

Her statement about Iran’s influence activities and the ODNI’s news briefing on the election “threat landscape” are part of a new effort by the intelligence community to keep the public informed about foreign efforts to influence America’s democratic processes, officials said.

[…]The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Mark Warner, D-Va., praised the agencies’ latest efforts.

“I have long pushed the intelligence community to be more open with the public about the complex and serious foreign influence threats targeting the United States — particularly in the context of U.S. elections. Today’s press briefing is a strong step in that direction,” Warner said in a statement.

Russia aims to undermine Biden in November election, intel officials say [NBC]

…but…while we’re talking about simmering frogs

Why is the pundit class so desperate to push Biden out of the race? [Guardian]

…it’s not all bedbug bretts & doubt-thats

EZRA KLEIN: So let me offer a roadmap for this. I want to talk about whether Joe Biden is in shape to govern, which is one of the questions I think people have been batting around; whether he’s in shape to run in 2024 and win; whether he can be replaced and what the downsides of that might be.

But let’s begin with the question of governing. Do you think Biden is fit to serve right now?

JAMELLE BOUIE: If I’m going to be completely honest, I don’t know if I have access to the kind of information that would allow me to make a definitive judgment in that regard. The reporting suggests that he basically has a six hour window in which he is at, like, peak condition and then needs to rest. Other reporting suggests that he’s had sort of forgetful moments and such. But I’m not even sure that offers that much of a window into his capacity to govern.

If we’re going to judge simply by the record of the administration thus far, I would say that, yeah, he has the capacity to govern. The administration has juggled a lot over the last three years and change — major pieces of legislation, foreign policy crises, so on and so forth.

And so if you’re going to look at simply what has the administration been doing, has it been dropping the ball on critical concerns to both it and the country, I don’t think it has been. And so Biden seems capable of governing. Is he capable of the performance of governing? I’m not so sure he is.

…how many people look at the thing that way…I dunno…less than I’d like seems a safe bet, though

I think we know he’s not making strange or erratic decisions in the way that Donald Trump himself often does and did.

[…] But it’s also not clear for how much credit to give him in his capacity — Biden in his capacity personally. On one level, Biden deserves credit for all that because that’s what the normal rules of how we cover this. And on the other hand, it’s a little hard to see through all that to the man himself.

JAMELLE BOUIE: I think that’s fair. I think I might make the observation that that is often the case for presidents. Right? Eisenhower famously had a matrix of presidential decision making. And I’m not going to remember off the top of my head, but the rough outlines were sort of things that were urgent and the president had to handle, meaning urgent, very important, things that were important but not urgent, things that were neither urgent nor that important, and things that were urgent but not particularly important.

And so much of the duty of being president and of choosing a staff that can help manage all these things is sort of like figuring out which issues go where, who can handle what. And that’s really only something a president can do. And so if we’re looking at the administration’s performance, and if we are saying to ourselves this administration seems to be handling the important, urgent stuff quite well, it seems to be handling the important but not urgent stuff quite well, and so on and so forth — in the absence of any additional evidence, information, we kind of have to attribute at least that management of issues to Biden.

He’s appointed a staff that’s been able to handle information and handle situations as they come. And he seems to be able to at least make decisions about when he needs to step in and when he needs to intervene, which really is so much of the job of being president.

…if I had to bet…my money would be on the majority opting for a media-parsed canary in that coalmine over getting down & dirty with the folks kicking up dust at the coalface

[…] Is this sort of cut people are making between performing the presidency — which is the cut made — and doing the job of the presidency, is that really a fair cut?

JAMELLE BOUIE: So I would say that the distinction there is worth making. And yet, if you’re going to make the argument that Biden has been an able president behind doors, then I think it’s also true that his inability to perform the presidency for the public, his inability to go to the public directly and make his case, has weakened his behind closed doors presidency, that the two things do operate together.

They’re part of the various levers and mechanisms the president can use to try to achieve their party’s agenda. And it has likely harmed Biden […]

JAMELLE BOUIE: I think that is an interesting way of posing the question. Because the idea that there is someone who can or cannot choose to run Joe Biden for president, I think, is not the case. We don’t live in a party system where political parties have that kind of control of authority or authority over the people that they nominate for the office of the presidency. The only person who can determine whether or not Joe Biden ran again this year was Joe Biden. And his decision more or less shaped the rest of how the Democratic party responded.

And if Joe Biden doesn’t think he’s too infirm, then that’s sort of settles the question as far as the Democratic Party is concerned. If I back up a bit here — I think part of my intervention into this conversation has been to just insist on thinking this through within the political system that we have, and not the one that we want or the one that we imagine we have. Maybe I think he’s too old, most Americans think he’s too old, but those aren’t really the relevant actors in terms of the decision of whether a president is going to stand for reelection.

…so…I don’t know as it’s getting any more helpful a question no matter who gets asked it how many times…but…riffing on it is apparently the new little black dress…so

EZRA KLEIN: Do you think a Biden ticket or a Harris ticket is a stronger ticket for Democrats in November?

JAMELLE BOUIE: Man, Ezra, you’re putting me right on the spot. [LAUGHS]

EZRA KLEIN: Listen, man. You can’t make all these good arguments and then — you know? [LAUGHS]

…[LAUGHS] is all very well…but…I feel like if you had a transcript for me there’d be be qualifiers…[LAUGHS NERVOUSLY] [LAUGHS MOROSELY] [JADED LAUGHTER] [MIRTHLESS CHUCKLE]…that kind of thing…anyway…here’s your punchline

OK. To the extent that Biden’s presence on the ticket is undermining party unity in a real and serious way, I think a Harris-led ticket is stronger. That’s sort of making the assumption that Harris is able to bring the entire Democratic Party, elected officials, donors, affiliated groups, affiliated individuals in the press, all that stuff right behind her, unified. Then I think that is a stronger ticket.

I think that if Harris is at the top, she will have a vice presidential nominee. And the choice of nominee also provides opportunities to send a message, to make a kind of electoral case that I think could be advantageous to the Democratic Party and can sell this image of this is not a radical ticket, this is not a ticket that’s reaching out to transform America. This is a ticket of two moderate politicians who want to stop Donald Trump and want to bring along as many Americans as possible. So assuming unity, I think a Harris ticket is probably stronger. And what polling has at the very least suggests that it’s no worse.

…big “if”…but…if…then…no worse & maybe better…which is enough to satisfy pascal’s wager…but that had less variables, I guess…not like…say…the open convention ezra isn’t alone in advocating for…which is a thing that I’ve seen argued as the opposite of what would play into the hands of MAGA & the drunk-on-success-beyond-their-wildest-dreams active measures crew…while looking pretty much like the very cake they’ve been having & eating for a while now…to me…which doesn’t count for even as much as a hill of beans…but…is pretty natural when you came into this with a worst-case scenario in which meaningful consequences swapped out the MAGA messiah for an annointed ringer on that ticket & left joe the only old guy in the sprint finish…& would have been a lot happier with dem leadership having settled the one-term thing pre-mid-terms & had all those ducks lined up & the last one standing settled early doors so whoever it was had the sort of funding foundation that joe’s standing on…but…at the risk of bringing rishi’s bad night into it with eye-glazing effect…if you compare reform’s campaign & result…which was almost exclusively predicated on a need to provide the appearance of support beyond the reality…running candidates solely to scrape the bottom of the barrel for every scrap of protest that could be parlayed into a statistic suggestive of a mandate commensurate with the volume at which nige aims to bray like an ass in parliament…an approach that has been reasonably likened to the MAGA rodeo…& the lib dems…who played the board they were looking at by the rules arguably more effectively than anyone this go around…& have the westminster head-count to prove it…it feels like I’m not seeing as many op-eds attributed to folks claiming to be taking lines representative of those battleground states we all hear so much about as I’d have expected to be by now

…I’m betting it ain’t on account of stacey abrams got bored & went home to eat popcorn & drink endless tea…just sayin’

JAMELLE BOUIE: I don’t think the argument that has been put out there by some observers, that you could remove Biden with no particular incident in terms of his political hit to the Democratic Party, and then have an ad hoc process at the convention — I think that the downside risks of that are actually like very high.

The odds that you get a chaotic, contested convention, a convention process that, for one, isn’t really designed for what I think people imagine happening here — the odds that you get that, that maybe even is inconclusive is, I think, a way worse outcome than just having Biden at the top of the ticket.

The delegates to conventions, if you go on a very micro level, these are not party bosses. This is not 1944, when you have the boss of Saint Louis on the floor hassling people to get Truman on the ticket. This is not a party convention, even in 1960 or 1964, where you have party bosses, and people who represent constituencies and interests and votes on the floor, hassling people, making deals, trading that kind of thing. That doesn’t exist anymore. It’s some elected officials, but it’s a lot of just ordinary people who are dedicated volunteers in their local parties, their state parties. And they are — they go on behalf of a candidate.

And so I think this is important to emphasize because — no offense to any of these people, they’re all great. I’ve been to conventions. I’ve talked to people who go. They’re wonderful people who are really engaged in the day to day of American democracy. And I have a lot of respect for them.

But I don’t think there are people equipped to do the high stakes negotiating that comes with choosing a presidential nominee. And I think that putting that kind of weight on the process as it actually exists is not going to lend itself well to a kind of orderly or even sort of only temporarily chaotic decision making that I think people want. I think what’s more likely to happen is confusion and disarray in a way that does harm the Democratic ticket.
[…]
If I had to summarize my view of the risk here, it’s that more the Democratic Party is perceived to be ununified and in disarray, to use a cliché, the more dangerous that is for the party’s November chances. One thing I do think — well, two things I think are not taken seriously enough is simply just what the Republican message is going to be here if there is any kind of disarray, even if Biden is — even if you get the best possible scenario here, if Biden steps down and you get Harris or whomever and everyone’s united behind them, the Democratic Party is ready to go, I think the message from the Republicans that first, Trump is so dominant that he forced the president out of the race and second, that can you trust these people to run the country, I think those are two potent messages. And it would take a lot of work to push back on them with success.

And so I think where I am at this moment post-debate is actually quite agnostic about whether Biden should step down or not. But if that’s the choice, people are going to make, I’m urging everyone to take the practical stuff very seriously. Do not think of this as, oh, he’ll be gone and everything will be magically better. Maybe you raise your odds from where they are, but there’ll be a whole new set of challenges to tackle once you take that step. And be prepared to tackle them and not be caught flat footed by them.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/09/podcasts/transcript-ezra-klein-interviews-jamelle-bouie.html

…so…while a certain sort continue to actively take every measure they can to ensure that no scale is without their thumb-print

For Von Spakovsky, who leads Heritage Foundation’s election law initiative and authored the section of Project 2025 on federal election oversight, the testimony joined two of his favorite topics: immigration and what he believes is the unseen scourge of fraudulent voting in American elections.

It was also deeply misleading. The criminal penalties for voting in federal elections are steep for immigrants without full citizenship – felony charges and even deportation. So they rarely cast ballots in US elections. That has not stopped Von Spakovsky from doubling down on his claim that non-citizen voting threatens election security.

Anxieties about voter fraud entered the conservative mainstream in full force in the mid-2000s, as Republican-controlled state legislatures across the country adopted voter identification laws ostensibly to prevent individual acts of fraudulent voting – like a voter casting a ballot in two states or under someone else’s name. The idea that elections could be vulnerable to widespread fraud formed the basis of Donald Trump’s lie that the 2020 election had been stolen – captivating his base and driving thousands to insurrectionist violence on 6 January 2021.

Von Spakovsky, who former colleagues describe as mild-mannered and even awkward, did not join Trump’s legal efforts to overturn the 2020 election; nor did he join the former president’s loyalists who publicly decried the results of the election as illegitimate.

But Von Spakovsky has nonetheless been working tirelessly, often behind the scenes, to raise unfounded allegations of widespread voter fraud throughout the course of his decades-long career as a conservative activist. “Election integrity” and the idea that US elections are vulnerable to mass, fraudulent voting, has become a centerpiece of conservative politics, with Von Spakovsky playing a key role in bringing the movement to that point.

“He probably is the single most important advocate, over a long period of time, persuading people to take this claim of fraud seriously,” said Paul Smith, the senior vice-president of the non-partisan voting rights group Campaign Legal Center.

One of the authors of Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation thought leader has sown his anxieties over election integrity far and wide among conservatives

…can we take a moment to imagine what it would be like if all we heard out of biden was endless whining about how unfair everyone was being noticing he’s slightly older than the orange grievance-zombie he’s running against…& how fucking weird it is that there’s anyone left to applaud when the sign lights up at rally-shaped echo chambers that seem to serve as the equivalent of an iron lung…because that shit is fucking weird…I don’t care how normal it is…it shouldn’t be?

Instead, [trash batshit-coot] delivered a rambling 75-minute speech that included a succession of attacks on Biden and his faltering debate performance, which has raised questions among Democrats about whether the 81-year-old president was robust enough for a second term of office.

He seized on the post-debate turbulence that has prompted calls from some senior Democrats for Biden to step down and for Kamala Harris to be nominated.

“The radical left Democratic party is divided in chaos, and having a full-scale breakdown all because they can’t decide which of their candidates is more unfit to be president, sleepy, crooked Joe Biden or laughing Kamala,” he said, repeating previous derogatory terms for the pair.

“Despite all the Democrat panic this week, the truth is it doesn’t matter who they nominate because we are going to beat any one of them in a thundering landslide.”

…courting the delusional vote as a winning strategy is just…well, it still manages to stagger me some days, is all

Otherwise, it was a standard Trump stump speech, full of evidence-free claims that his 2020 election defeat was fraudulent; baseless accusations that overseas nations were sending to the US “most of their prisoners”; and a laughable assertion that a gathering of supporters numbering in the hundreds was really a crowd of 45,000.

…kinda like a greatest hits album from a one-hit wonder

It also touched on the surreal. Biden, he insisted, had raised the price of bacon four-fold.

“We don’t eat bacon any more,” Trump said.

Electric cars, he said, “cheated” the US public because drivers had to stop for three hours to recharge their vehicles after every 45 minutes of driving. And, in an echo of one of the more bizarre debate exchanges with Biden over who was the better golfer, he challenged his White House successor to 18 holes over the Doral course while granting a 10-stroke concession.

“It will be among the most watched sporting events in history, maybe bigger than the Ryder Cup or even the Masters,” Trump said, pledging $1m to a charity of Biden’s choosing if he lost.

…it’s like the part of his spinal column where most of us have a lizard brain preoccupied with stuff like self-preservation was grafted out for one that replaced that with the instinct to always & forever be grifting first & foremost…even when he’s meandered so far off the point that in any ordinary race it’d be the kind of handicap that debate albatross has been for biden…& yet…check that balanced coverage?

Returning to politics, Trump assailed Democrats for tax hikes he said they wanted to impose; criticized Biden for the US military’s chaotic 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan; and promised to build an “iron dome” missile defense system for the US, if he was elected in November.

…like the hike when the break he only gave permanently to the really rich expired for the overwhelming majority of taxpayers…the withdrawl he rendered “fait” & has the nerve to blame on those he forced into the role of “acompli”…compared to which the extent to which he doesn’t understand anything about that last bit of bullshit beyond the opportunistic efficacy of the dog-whistling it affords manages to be comparatively negligible despite the slavering lunancy it belies in plain sight

“I hope he hasn’t exhausted himself with all the golf that he’s been playing,” Texas congresswoman Veronica Escobar said.

“Speaking of staying off the campaign trail, Trump has been hiding a lot recently, not just from voters and from the press, but from Project 2025.

“Donald Trump tried to pretend that he had nothing to do with Project 2025 despite the fact that it was written for him by the people who know him best. And yesterday, his campaign preview of the RNC platform was just as unhinged and extreme as Trump himself. They left out some of the most unpopular specifics that we know they support.

“As usual, they’re trying to hide the ball from the American public.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jul/09/trump-doral-florida-campaign-rally

…I get it…bacon is a contentious issue…& they’ve run the gamut trying to pull out every stop while grinding that organ for all they’re worth…but…come on…I know the asshole won an election that one time…& I know how insane it looks that he’s in the running if you’ve run through that homework bob mueller put together…but…seriously…I’d take biden in a bath chair with actual drool hanging from the slack half of his post-stroke face over the party of felonious bunk…so I know I’m hardly immune from a partisan charge…but…to finally get back to the thing I started with

That bigger story, of course, is the former president’s appalling unfitness for office, not only because he tried to overturn a legitimate election and is a felon, out on bail and awaiting sentencing, but because of things he has said and done in very recent weeks. As just one example, he claimed that he doesn’t know anything about Project 2025, the radical rightwing plan hatched by some of his closest allies to begin dismantling our democracy if he wins another term.

Trump’s disavowal is a ridiculous lie, but I doubt most members of the public know anything about it, nor do they likely know much – if anything – about Project 2025.

But anyone following mainstream media coverage could not miss knowing about the latest polls on whether Biden should step aside, how Kamala Harris would fare in a head-to-head competition with Trump, and which members of Congress have called for a new Democratic nominee.

And those are just the news stories – not to mention the nonstop punditry on cable news and the near takeover of the opinion sections of major publications.

Meanwhile, what of Trump’s obvious cognitive decline, his endless lies, his shocking plans to imprison his political enemies and to deport millions of people he calls “animals”, his relationship with the late accused sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein?

“Sure, you can say, we’ve covered those things,” commented Norman Ornstein, emeritus scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a longtime observer of media and politics. But, Ornstein pushed back: “Where? On the front page above the fold? As one-offs before moving on? In a fashion comparable to the Defcon 1 coverage of Biden’s age and acuity?”

There really is no comparison in the amount or intensity of coverage. One journalist, Jennifer Schulze, counted New York Times stories related to Biden’s age in the week following the debate; she counted a staggering 192 news and opinion pieces, compared to 92 stories on Trump – and that was in a week when the US supreme court had ruled he has immunity for official acts.

Nor is there much self-scrutiny or effort to course-correct. Only self-satisfaction and an apparent commitment to more of the same.
[…]
On Monday, the Times sent out as “breaking news” a story whose headline announced that an expert in Parkinson’s disease had visited the White House eight times in a recent eight-month period; much further down in the story we learn that the same doctor also had made 10 visits to the White House in 2012, and that he has supported the White House medical team for more than a dozen years. But many people never get past the headline.

“I’m starting to think the Times will see it as a ‘win’ if Biden drops out,” one media observer told me this week.

Of course, the problem certainly is not just the New York Times, despite its agenda-setting influence. It’s also TV news, both network and cable. And, to a lesser extent, it’s other major US publications.

Where does that leave us?

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jul/09/biden-media-attacks-trump-felon

…if the first response that springs to mind is “exhausted”…or second if your inner monlogue is more inclined to “fucking exhausted”…I dunno…don’t give the fuckers the satisfaction?

…it’s less in your face…but…there’s reason to believe it ain’t all going their way

The United States and several allies said Tuesday that they had seized control of a sophisticated Russian propaganda mill that used artificial intelligence to drive nearly a thousand covert accounts on the social network X.

Though governments have increasingly turned to AI in the past year to spread messages more widely and credibly, the takedown is unusual because the Western intelligence agencies traced it to an officer of the Russian FSB intelligence force and to a former senior editor at state-controlled publication RT, formerly called Russia Today, as explained in court filings.

…I’m sure elon will be delighted to know that someone took him seriously when he said bots on twitter needed to be dealt with…since he seems more in the business of trying to get subscrition fees out of as many of them as possible these days & clearly hasn’t been able to spare the time to tackle the problem with his genius-brain like he said he would…right after he said he shouldn’t have to buy the thing because there were too many of those…just a bit before he bought it & apparently bought into the idea he’d imagined the whole bots-are-a-bad-thing bit…or whatever

In a strikingly detailed joint advisory, agencies in the United States, the Netherlands and Canada identified various software programs used to manage the network, including one named Meliorator, which created fictitious users known as “souls” in various countries. The FBI won a court order allowing it to seize two web domains that the operation had used to register the email addresses behind the accounts.

“Today’s actions represent a first in disrupting a Russian-sponsored Generative AI-enhanced social media bot farm,” FBI Director Christopher A. Wray said in a statement. “Russia intended to use this bot farm to disseminate AI-generated foreign disinformation, scaling their work with the assistance of AI to undermine our partners in Ukraine and influence geopolitical narratives favorable to the Russian government.”

…uh huh

The system evaded one of X’s techniques for verifying the authenticity of users by automatically copying one-time passcodes sent to the registered email addresses. References to Facebook and Instagram in the program code indicated that the operation intended to expand to those platforms, officials said.

The agencies recommended that social media companies improve their methods for catching covertly automated behavior.

X complied with a court order to furnish information on the accounts to the FBI, then deleted them. The company did not respond to questions from The Washington Post.
[…]
John Scott-Railton, a researcher at the Canadian nonprofit the Citizen Lab, said the countries provided such detailed information about the inner workings of the botnet to help other investigators and companies know what to look for.

“They don’t think this problem is going anywhere, so they are sharing widely,” Scott-Railton said.

The documents show that AI’s large language models have helped Russian propagandists scale their operation and help with translation, he said. It also helps them avoid detection software that looks for repeated use of the same internet protocol addresses and other identifiers.

But many other systems are operating already, and they will get better as they adapt for what is getting detected and what is getting by, Scott-Railton said. “This isn’t even the tip of the iceberg,” he said. “This is the drip of the iceberg.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/07/09/us-russia-bot-farm-propaganda-ai/

…anyway…I’m off to see if I can make a playlist so farscy has one less thing to be drumming fingers about…& in the meantime…here’s something that’s supposed to be positive

‘Antidotes to despair’: five things we’ve learned from the world’s best climate journalists [Guardian]

…let’s see how all that looks this time tomorrow after whatever news conference deal joe has in store for us this evening?