The Frankish Reich

I notice Benny Johnson has continued his inane tweeting as if nothing has happened. This is the best summary of what Russia was up to. NOTE: no denials from any of the "pundits" mentioned! They are taking the position that they were helpless dupes. A good article, based on a close reading of the indictment itself. Read it; you will come away with the clear conclusion that these guys (well, 2 guys, one girl) are either dumb as dirt or that they were trying like hell to avoid the obvious here. REMINDER: these are the people our Trumpies here often cut-and-paste from. You know, the reliable Russian-funded alt-media that is so superior to the MSM. https://www.emptywheel.net/2024/09/04/don-jrs-online-buddies-allegedly-demand-5-million-from-russian-shell-companies-to-say-nice-things-about-his-daddy/ To prove the FARA charge — one you’d only need to prove if Kalashnikov and Afanasyeva showed up in the US for arrest — you’d need to prove that the two RT people succeeded in influencing US politics, and deliberately hid that they were doing so on behalf of a Russian entity. And RT is sufficient — you wouldn’t need to show that RT was paid by the Russian government. So you have to show how they worked through cut-outs, the two people who run Tenet media and through them the influencers like Tim Pool and Benny Johnson who got duped. And that requires you showing how RT set up fake personas, including a fake funder named Eduard Grigoriann, as a front to use to convince Pool and Johnson this was all legit, so that after one of them — I believe this is Pool — asked for more information about whom he’d be working with, they would have ready answers. One of the other figureheads — either Johnson or Dave Rubin — complained about this fake funder (FBI mocks them all because they keep spelling his name wrong), because he used woke language: Commentator-1 had “a problem with the profile we sent over, specifically the reference to ‘social justice.” I think it may be because that’s usually a term used by liberals, but we’re trying to create a conservative network.” That led to a Zoom meeting that the persona, Grigoriann may have missed, because they ***** up the time difference between Paris and Moscow. At approximately 8:58 a.m. Central Time that day, “Eduard Grigoriann” replied to his earlier email: “I am there guys.” The time, in fact, was 3:58 p.m. in Paris — but it was 4:58 p.m. in Moscow. Approximately two minutes later, “Eduard Grigoriann” performed a Google search for “time in Paris.” “Eduard Grigoriann” them replied to his email, in part: “Sorry, wrong hour. Didn’t sync the calendar.” There’s some real clown show stuff in this. But it didn’t matter for Pool and whichever one is Commentator-1, because they signed contracts worth almost $5 million a year or $100,000 per non-exclusive video.

Q. Why would Russia (through RT, Russian state-controlled media) want to fund these American "patriot" self-appointed pundits? Putin is not an idiot. What was in it for him? To ask the question is to answer it.

And now Oregon, where nearly 1 in 10 kids "benefits" from a measles vaccine exemption. https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/09/record-measles-outbreak-in-oregon-blamed-on-vaccine-exemptions/

Amazing, I say! Congressman from Silicon Valley district opposes taxing billionaires on unrecognized gains.

Now we know the official Russian position on who is authorized to call himself a Command Sergeant Major.

READERS PROVIDE CONTEXT: Benny Johnson is a Russian asset.

Benny Johnson, useful idiot. Often quoted right here! So if he's a useful idiot, what are his re-tweeters/posters? A level below idiot, but I'm not sure what there's a word for that. EDIT: I just thought of a word for it. Ol' Tarheel!

We always say don't speculate. Eff that. I'm gonna speculate. One of the teachers killed was a Special Ed teacher. What are the chances the kid was a Special Ed student? We've seen it before. Kid on the spectrum with access to the family's guns. Lashing out at the world in the worst possible way.

And that's partly driven by the desire for homes much larger than the one I grew up in. Maybe we need to bring back the 1,100 sq ft starter home? Not sure when you grew up, but the late 70s/early 80s of my youth weren't exactly known for lack of drugs and crime.

Interesting. Thanks for pointing that out. I think there are two or three very corrosive things out there that are at work. For girls, social media. For boys, video games and online porn. For girls, social media makes them hyper social in a world of other girls. They emulate each other's styles, modes of communicating, etc. and have little interaction outside that world. And it starts when they're not even teenagers. For boys, video games serve the same role, and porn both makes them less interested in the real thing and less understanding of how to communicate with actual real girls.

If only they were running away and hiding. What we've seen here in Colorado: first wave of Venezuelans were generally educated, including many professional people. They needed a little help getting settled, but they've caused no problems. Second wave: lower classes, more rural or from slums, families, no family ties in the USA, started building tent cities before the mayor stepped in with his housing plan, but decent people. Latest wave: the riff-raff, criminals, more young single males than first two waves, being put in these hotels and crappy apartments on an ostensibly short term basis. There's a lot of speculation here that a different apartment building that was recently condemned for health and safety reasons was really shut down because the Venezuelan gangs had taken it over. In other words, a way to evict them without evicting them. Most people hope the Colorado winter will send them packing to Florida ...

I just watched it. She did fine. I think CNN's resident Republican said someone in the campaign called it boring. It was. Boring is perfectly o.k. I didn't see Walz jumping in at all to save her. Generally softball questions, but they did press her a little on fracking, and she gave the standard candidate's answer of "I was against it before I was for it," while avoiding those unfortunate words that sunk John Kerry (was it John Kerry?). So nothing interesting for the other side to clip and distribute. Nothing in this will change anything in the race. She's not a remarkably gifted politician, she's not a policy wonk, but she's not an airhead or VP Cackles. Rating: 6.5/10 because she did what she needed to do (come off as mature and prepared to be President) but didn't do anything memorable.

They're both taking baby steps toward the middle. Traditionally this would've been done after the primary season, but there wasn't really any such thing for either party this year. I say this as a voter who wants presidential candidates to be more toward the middle ... Another thing to remember: Silver's win probability model now tries to account for (and thus dampen - "regresses to the mean") the post-convention bounce thing. As we all know, polling is a lot trickier in the cell phone/screen calls era. I'm still surprised it "works" at all. Silver's model has been remarkably good when it comes to the popular vote. State-level polling is even harder and typically uses smaller samples, so the room for error there is even higher. And on 2016: it's important to remember (as Silver reminds us constantly) that his model did show Trump with about a 33% chance of winning, whereas most seat of the pants pundits were saying Hillary had it in the bag. So I wouldn't say his model was "wrong." It's just that sometimes the Jets beat the Bills.

Change your mind? Well, how about looking at the tweet you posted which shows Harris up by 2 in the popular. It's a repeat of the last election.

Nazi? No. Everyone knows about Nazis. Hitler is just iconic in a terrible icon way. Ask anyone who the worst person in history was, 99.99% (maybe more) will say Hitler. The other 0.01% post here and say Obama. Fascist? Probably. You rarely hear it in ordinary conversation, just in crazy political social media.

People can always affirm, or pledge, or whatever. All the people who believe testifying under oath somehow violates their religion do that all the time. "Do you swear or affirm ..." Let's just call it a promise. A promise to treat people with respect.

Shake Shack tried to muscle in on In-n-Out's turf. Since the product is worse, they've failed.

⬆️ 60+ voter who thinks "commie" is still a thing? Definitely. Career stalled out at 35, angry at all those Asian lab workers who got promoted above him? No doubt. Divorced, living alone in a depressing apartment, hence up at all hours reposting stupidity fed to him by Twitter? Absolutely. What people mean when they say "Trump's base?" You got it.

I can't understand why the Trumpie strategists and pundits decided to go with the antiquated "communist" or "commie" as their buzzwords. It simply doesn't resonate with people under about 50 years old - those with no grown-up memories of the Cold War. I think "woke" or "SJWs" or whatever it was before worked better. At least younger people know those terms and find the people they bring to mind pretty annoying (at least most of them do).

Agreed. I can't see TX or FL flipping. That would just be too drastic a change. But I will admit the abortion ballot measure in Florida is likely to change the demographics of the turnout in favor of women, and particularly younger/unmarried women. We've seen that effect in other states. So it is conceivable. My only prediction is that at least one state will surprise us in November. I think you definitely are on to something in NC. I'll also note that horrible down ballot candidates never help, and we see Kari Lake running about 5 points weaker than Trump in AZ.

Nazi Jack working overtime, posting stuff straight from the Trump campaign! Next up: the time Donald saved Christmas by proving funding for the Central Park ice rink. Yes, there was a good side to him. Back in his prime, about 30 years ago ...

He's trying, but you're right. There's something about his attitude/demeanor that causes all his attempts at humor to fall flat and to make him look like an arrogant pr!ck. Political talent is a thing, and Walz has it, and Vance doesn't.

This is part of a trend that was amplified by Trump in 2020. Remember how the RNC - for the first time in memory - refused to draft a new platform for the Convention? They simply stated they are adopting the 2016 platform. And then we had the remarkably brief "new" platform for 2024, and the disavowal of all the policy positions outlined in depth in Project 2025. Harris does have the 2024 Democratic Party platform, but that is full of generalizations and not specific policy proposals. So yes, I think the days of in-depth policy proposals from presidential candidates are over.

Julie Kelly has been suspended from PPP.

LOOK AT ME! I'M IGNOOOOOORING YOU!!