Hodad

That whole line of attack is utterly bizarre. Yes, slave owners often raped their slaves and children were conceived. As if the brutality of slavery weren't enough, adding rape to the mix suddenly makes a stick to whack Harris? These people are definitely weird.

The author has some interesting things to say, but I think they are way off base that this is a new phenomenon. This has been the reality for years. The litmus test in conservative circles has long been personal loyalty to Trump himself rather than party values. Even to the point of calling powerful, effective Republicans (McConnell for example) RINOs if they expressed any divergence from Trump. The express thought is that Republican=Trump and there is no room in the part for any deviation from total and singular loyalty. It's been really creepy for a long time.

Yes, this is another big nothing. I would disagree though that it's increasingly difficult to find real information. There is an almost endless amount of real information. Instead, what is happening is that in the age of content algorithms it is becoming ever easier for false information to find you. People are unwittingly fed a heavy mix of facts and fictions that aligns to their interests, and they don't have the ability to tell one from the other. It's not strictly a partisan issue, but it's a problem that's more prevalent on the political right. We have a couple of generations who grew up on the Dewey decimal system instead of the Internet, and they generally have no idea how to vet and evaluate information in the wild--no natural immunity. And then the less educated among us often didn't learn or practice critical thinking. Again, no hard line, but speaking generally it correlates with education. And both of those demographic segments break right, so the problem is worse on the right. This has been the case as long as I've been on the Internet. Conservatives (especially older conservatives) were constantly falling for and re-posting crazy chain emails that they were all sending to one another. We see a slightly more modern version now, with conservatives here re-posting weird, unvetted, random shit from Twitter and YouTube. They don't know how to evaluate a story or claim, but if it aligns with their interests, they're going to share it anyway. Also not just a problem in North America. In India, for example, What'sApp is ubiquitous. It's how everyone connects, and older Indians drive the younger generations batty by believing and sharing every crazy thing that comes though. No natural immunity to the polluted information ecosystem.

Actually, no. That's your your interpretation informed by the article. The headline is ambiguous at best. Taking the lead "with" one group is more likely to communicate that the use, addition or application of one group has given the overall lead. A better editor would have used clearer language. Rather than "with" they might have used "among," for example. Or rephrased altogether to avoid ambiguity.

It's the rejection of the world of orthodox information in favor of "secret truths" that only the special few embrace. And embracing these secrets makes one special. (Though not in a way that's appealing to the rest of us.) Some people simply get off on that feeling. Trutherism, birtherism, Q-Anon. It's a progressiin. Not everyone will slide down the slope, but if one is likely to go the full distance, these are the warning whistles. Like the best missionaries, our recent arrival is intelligent and well spoken enough to conduct the dialectic, eager to help receptive minds find their way to "the truth" one point at a time. If one has fallen for those other isms, they will be easy marks. And Trump has already tried to overthrow our democracy once. It would be foolish to think he's above trying again. Rather, he's more prepared. This election is going to be a shitshow. For 4 years the Trumpublicans have been actively placing election deniers in as many positions as possible, with the expectation that they are likely to refuse to certify results with a Trump loss. It's going to get very messy.

Having a Nazi sympathizer and Holocaust denier on the board is a sort of novelty, like having a genuine flat-Earther, but also a harbinger of sorts. A Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. Take heed, conspiracy theorists, this is your future if you build for yourselves an alternate reality of heterodoxy and false history. Your election denials and climate denials and FBI conspiracies and other nonsense that turns you away from the reality where the rest of us live.

I didn't say anything about RCP. And you only pasted in a Twitter posts. And you can clearly see in the timeline that the migration was planned under Trump and actually started just after Biden was sworn in. We've known this for years. If you look at the post you pasted you'll notice this line from the alleged whistleblower: "I worked on January 6th, and I had to turn in my phone a couple of months later, and never saw it again." The J6 committee wasn't even formed until July 2021. So even by this person's comment, their communications were NOT deleted after the J6 committee request, as you claim. That timeline I posted is over 2 years old. We have known about the deleted messages all this time. There is a post in your OP claiming that Kim Cheatle's phone was wiped during this process. She didn't even join the Secret Service until September 2022. Again I ask, WTF is going on in this thread? Read the timeline--or the hundreds of other articles from 2022 when this story blew up.

Nope. I know you like to get your news from Twitter, YouTube videos and chain emails, but that's simply not true. Here's a timeline: January 16, 2021: Ten days after the insurrection at the Capitol, four House committees send a letter to Homeland Security and other relevant agencies instructing them to preserve records related to January 6. It’s still unclear whether the Secret Service received the guidance. A source familiar with the investigation told CNN the Secret Service tried to find it last week but could not. January 25, 2021: The Secret Service “instructed employees on how to preserve content on their phones,” sending a reminder to employees that a preplanned data migration would wipe their phones, according to a letter Secret Service sent to the House select committee on July 19, 2022. The internal Secret Service notice made clear that employees were solely responsible for saving records that had to be preserved by law. February 26, 2021: DHS Inspector General Joseph Cuffari requests electronic communications from the Secret Service for the first time, according to agency spokesman Anthony Guglielmi. “DHS OIG requested electronic communications for the first time on Feb. 26, 2021, after the migration was well under way. The Secret Service notified DHS OIG of the loss of certain phones’ data, but confirmed to OIG that none of the texts it was seeking had been lost in the migration,” Guglielmi said in a July 14, 2022, statement.

WTF is happening in this thread? We have knows about the deleted text messages for years. It was a sore spot for the J6 committee. Deletions began under Trump. By the time the IG requested them in Feb (1 month into Biden admin) they were allegedly gone. Along with the relevant phone records of Chad Wolf and Ken Cucinelli and a number of DoD officials. And they were deleting this basically as Biden was being sworn in. One would have to be at least a little suspicious that this was done to cover for Trump's activities regarding the coup memo/attempt, leading up to and during the insurrection at the capitol--and perhaps for what the Secret Service planned to do to Mike Pence. So, as usual, you have it ass-backward. It's still the same people as always lying and attacking democracy: team Trump.

She's been running for president for two weeks already. I can't believe she doesn't have a robust platform and web site to match!

Apparently you guys all cut class in 8th grade English when they covered allusion.

You're just trolling at this point. I don't think anyone is actually confused about Trump's many flaws or his messages. From the second he rode down that stupid gold escalator and lied about there being "thousands" of people in attendance (many hired) to hear him gin up hate against Mexican immigrants (and any other thing that flowed through his stream of consciousness), we knew exactly what Trump was. All hate, fear and anger--but he alone can fix it. He is the dark side of American politics. The problem is that so many of you actually like it.

I love the commitment here! Keep it up and I'm sure we'll all soon forget that he's a pathological liar, serial criminal and that his political career is built almost entirely on hate and fear.

They aren't ads, and it's not a "stolen candidacy" you weirdo. The primary was open, but nobody mounted a credible challenge to Biden. The nomination is still open after Biden's withdrawal. Anybody, right now, could declare and try to win the support of the delegates at the convention. No one will, but they could if they wanted to. All of the likely contenders endorsed Harris straight away. That's how she became the presumptive nominee at this point.

And they may be genuine. I still think you don't have any idea how any of this works. Toyota has a new car. They fly out a few influencers, pay them and pamper them. Then the influencers make their content. It's not a guaranteed endorsement. It's a guaranteed engagement. Does the payment influence the content? Sometimes. But influencers also build credibility with their audiences by creating genuine content, thus growing their audiences and their earning potential. So they also have financial incentive to be genuine. Some manage it better than others.

Yeah. everyone is a regular guy. And good luck with the "truth, love and justice" rebranding. That will be an understandably tough sell. lol

Just a regular guy, shitting in his gold-plated toilet, philandering, stealing from his own charity, defrauding would-be students, staging the occasional coup. Totally regular guy. Lol.

People who think that influencers are "organic" are stunningly naive. How the hell do you think influencers make their money? You never wondered where the money comes from? lol Nearly all influencer income comes from sponsored content, marketing firms paying influencers to promote a brand. The only part that feels "organic" about it is that the best influencers choose brands aligned to their interests and the (interests of their followers) and give credibly authentic reactions from what is plausibly their own perspective.

OMG, you guys have finally cracked it, uncovering the super secret strategy behind how influencers make money by selling their influence to marketing organizations. That Twitter sequence is hilarious. A bunch of rubes who were apparently born yesterday and are just being exposed to the marketing the rest of us have experienced for the last 15 years. 🙄

Sorry, you must be thinking of someone else. Trump is clueless on the issues. That's why everything is terrible or awful or amazing and the best. He's not curious, doesn't read the briefs and is much more comfortable just slinging mud for the cheering cultists. That's his zone. Couldn't come up with an actual fact or policy to save his life.

Woman is a gender. Female is a sex. Notions of gender--what is masculine or feminine, womanly or manly--have changed dramatically over time and vary widely from culture to culture. Our biology, not so much. The world is full of gendered things and concepts, from masculine and feminine verbs in language to toys and clothes and colors. Again, biology not so much. Gender traditional describes *things* associated with males and females. But those associations are changeable. And people's affinity toward those gender norms can change even within a lifetime. There's no denying these are closely related words (that's how we get gendered "norms" in the first place) and in colloquial speech many people are going to use them interchangeably--and be aligned most of the time. But now that you know the nuanced differences you can speak more precisely.

😵‍💫 I didn't think anyone knows WTF you're on about now, debate Biden.

Apparently not. Her record is 37 and 9 with just 5 KOs. That's good, but not overwhelming. Lots of women beating her.

What world? In the United States. Average wages have surpassed inflation for 12 straight months Longer now. That's a couple of months old.

Holy crap. You are responding to a post that is crystal clear. Just read it. Or, failing that, find a 5th grader and ask them to explain it to you.