What you’ve learned in hindsight about giant stories like RussiaGate and Covid should now be converted into foresight You won’t get everything right if you do this but if you don’t do it you will most surely get nearly everything wrong — Walter Kirn Read more →
EppsNet Archive: Russia
I Blame Jake Tapper
Jake Tapper Slams Trump’s Election Denialism at Minnesota Rally: 'These Lies — They Literally Have a Body Count' https://t.co/vvws6rNlvg via @mediaite <– Fortunately he said it on CNN so nobody heard it. More on this later … — Paul Epps (@paulepps) July 31, 2024 A “body count” — this guy should be ashamed of himself. Here’s what I think of when someone says “election denialism”: When was the last Democratic primary election that wasn’t rigged? 2016? Rigged. 2020? Rigged. (Both to prevent a Bernie Sanders nomination.) 2024? Double-rigged. No one was allowed to challenge Biden, probably to avoid debates. After he “won” the nomination, he was pulled and replaced by Kamala Harris. How many people voted for Kamala Harris as a presidential nominee? (Hint: it’s a round number.) And yet Democrats get huffy if you accuse them of rigging elections. Why is “election denialism” linked only to 2020? Did Democrats… Read more →
The First 2024 Presidential Debate is in the Books
https://t.co/nNlT0xBJ3Z — Paul Epps (@paulepps) June 29, 2024 When the presidential debates were first announced, I said that there was no way Biden was going to do a debate, so now I have to admit that I was wrong. But also, you can probably understand why I said that. Biden is who he is. He’s mentally and physically enfeebled. As long as he doesn’t do something deranged, like challenge his opponent to a live debate, the media can continue to do their best to cover for him. For example: Ladies and gentlemen, let’s revisit this supercut from 12 days ago. Well done MSM! pic.twitter.com/pSrnmnoVMo — MAZE (@mazemoore) June 28, 2024 Here’s what Biden said the day after the debate: “I know I’m not a young man. I don’t walk as easily as I used to. I don’t talk as smoothly as I used to. I don’t debate as well as… Read more →
Questions on the Hunter Biden Laptop
https://t.co/VdehI82LV1 — Paul Epps (@paulepps) June 15, 2024 Hunter Biden was convicted of multiple felonies this week, in part owing to the verified contents of his laptop, which the New York Post reported on before the 2020 election. A group of 51 former U.S. intelligence officials released an open letter on Oct. 19, 2020, regarding the Post’s Oct. 14 report about the discovery of the laptop, the contents of which included documentation of a series of ethically questionable business deals that the Biden family was pursuing in both Ukraine and China, with the very likely involvement of Joe Biden himself. The letter asserted that the laptop story had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” If you read the fine print, the letter does say that while the signatories had no “evidence of Russian involvement,” the laptop op “would be consistent with some of the key methods Russia… Read more →
The Secret is Out
When it comes to the countries of the collective West, the large network media, TV channels, (and) large newspapers can in no way boast of even trying to at least look impartial in terms of coverage. These are all media outlets that take an exceptionally one-sided position. Of course, there is no desire to communicate with such media, and it hardly makes sense, and it is unlikely that it will be useful. — Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov Read more →
Opting Out of Pride Night
Former NBA player Jason Collins, who became the first openly gay athlete to play in one of the four major North American sports leagues, spoke out this week about the recent wave of NHL players and teams opting out of Pride Night, saying that “religion should not be a cause for division.” — foxnews.com Some Russian NHL players have opted out over fear of reprisals in their home country, but the main reason given for opting out has been religious beliefs. You’ve got to offer some excuse and that’s the one that people seem most willing to accept. It may be sincere in most or all cases, I don’t know. I know that there are some people who believe in a God who frowns on any sort of non-heterosexual activities. Religion is definitely a cause of division in the world, there’s no disagreeing with that. But in this case, I’m… Read more →
Journalism 101 for Non-Journalists
Hunter Biden Sues Laptop Repair Shop Owner Citing Invasion of Privacy. — The Washington Post The lawsuit is an implicit admission that the laptop that was given to the FBI and Rudy Giuliani was in fact Hunter Biden’s laptop. The only way the laptop could be responsible for invading his privacy is if the material disseminated from it was in fact authentic. Pretty much everyone now knows and admits that the laptop is authentic, and pretty much everyone knew in October of 2020 that the laptop was authentic, including the corporate media and social media that were propagating a lie formulated by the CIA that the laptop was “Russian disinformation.” What we know for sure is that the media lied [about the laptop] and it’s Journalism 101 that when you make a mistake, as you’re going to do as a journalist, even big ones, the first thing you do is… Read more →
I’m Shocked — SHOCKED — to Find That My Letter Was Distorted
Clapper says letter about Russian links to Hunter Biden laptop saga was 'distorted' https://t.co/DFdQGXXS7f — Paul Epps (@paulepps) February 17, 2023 Wow! It took him more than two years to figure that out?! “All we were doing was raising a yellow flag that this could be Russian disinformation. Politico deliberately distorted what we said,” Clapper recently told the Washington Post. “The intent of the letter was that this could be Russian disinformation — emphasis on could,” Clapper told the outlet. “It’s a very important nuance … a distinction that people are always ignoring.” Well, he’s right. If you read the letter carefully, it does say — I’m paraphrasing here — we have no idea if the laptop is Russian disinformation, we have no evidence that it is, but it does have the classic earmarks of Russian spycraft. Why would 50 former high-ranking intel officials get together to write and sign… Read more →
What the State of the Union Didn’t Say
The president entered office with a 1.4% inflation rate and spiked it to 7%. 30-year mortgages of 2.7% soared to 6.5% in less than two years. Eggs are $7 a dozen. A thin steak is $15 a pound. A sheet of plywood is $95. Gas averaged $2.39 a gallon when the president took office and even after draining the Strategic Petroleum Reserve it is still $3.50 a gallon. In my state, California, gas has recently been over $5 a gallon. The price of natural gas has tripled in less than a year. In two years over 5 million foreign nationals poured into the United States—all illegally across a nonexistent border. The president said that he “lowered” inflation, energy prices and interest rates after sending them to astronomical levels and then seeing them momentarily taper off a bit. Like Nero bragging about rebuilding Circus Maximus after burning it down. He omitted… Read more →
A Ukrainian Question
In what conceivable way are American citizens benefited or having their lives improved or increasingly secured by escalating the U.S. role in the war in Ukraine? Or conversely, in what conceivable way would your life or the lives of most Americans be harmed by changes in the governance of various provinces in Eastern Ukraine? How would your life be affected if the citizens of the Donbas region decided, as Kosovo decided 20 years ago, that they preferred to be independent or be governed by Moscow rather than by Kyiv? Why would that matter to your life? Why is the U.S. government willing to provoke so much danger to the globe, so much risk of escalation, and a practically direct proxy war now with the world’s largest nuclear power? Over what? Over who rules various provinces in eastern Ukraine. — Glenn Greenwald Read more →
FBI: Exposé of Our Spread of Misinformation is “Misinformation”
The “Twitter Files” have been coming out in installments over the last couple weeks or so, documenting how the FBI, CIA, the Democratic party, almost every major news outlet, and tech giants like Twitter collaborated to label any information that might make people want to vote against Democrats as “misinformation,” and using that label to justify hiding the information from public view. The centerpiece of this collaboration was the Hunter Biden laptop story, reported by the New York Post shortly before the 2020 election. 50 members of the U.S. intelligence community signed a letter, which, if you read it carefully, said that the laptop could be Russian “disinformation,” although there was no evidence that it was Russian disinformation, and they really had no way of knowing whether it was Russian disinformation, but that it looked like like the kind of sneaky trick that Russia would pull, knowing that it would… Read more →
In Which We Learn That You’re Much More Likely to be Killed by a Bed Than by a Political Extremist
‘We are a tinderbox’: Political violence is ramping up, experts warn — Los Angeles Times Politically motivated violence has ebbed and flowed throughout U.S. history. Currently, America is going through an upsurge in right-wing violence, according to researchers who track attacks and other incidents. They say today’s climate is comparable to that in the mid-1990s, when a similar wave of right-wing violence culminated in the 1995 bombing of the federal office building in Oklahoma City, which killed 168 people. I’ll call bullshit on that. In fact, to avoid having to repeat myself, I’ll call bullshit on most of the article. It’s extremely slanted. There were 9,625 threats against members of Congress and their families last year, according to the Capitol Police — more than twice as many as in 2017. How many of the threats were carried out? I’ll estimate zero. “Death threats” are the biggest scam . . .… Read more →
Well first of all, tell me: Is there some society you know that doesn’t run on greed? You think Russia doesn’t run on greed? You think China doesn’t run on greed? What is greed? Of course, none of us are greedy, it’s only the other fellow who’s greedy. — Milton Friedman
Russia Trying to Help Sanders Campaign?
Bernie Sanders briefed by U.S. officials that Russia is trying to help his presidential campaign — Washington Post Wait, I thought the precedent set under the Obama administration was to not brief the campaign and get an illegal warrant to surveil staffers? Read more →
The New York Times vs. Trump
Slate has published a transcript of what it calls the New York Times “crisis town-hall meeting.” The transcript shows that Times executive editor Dean Baquet seems to fault readers for their failure to understand the Times and its duties in the era of Trump. “They sometimes want us to pretend that he was not elected president, but he was elected president,” Baquet said. “And our job is to figure out why, and how, and to hold the administration to account. If you’re independent, that’s what you do.” This was followed by 75 minutes of Q&A with staffers in which, by my count, every question except one could be summarized as “Why can’t we call Donald Trump a racist more often?” In terms of figuring out why and how Trump was elected, I feel sure that “Can you believe what stupid racists Republican voters are?” moves us further from rather than… Read more →
Anderson Cooper Has Not Been Cleared of Russian Collusion
Anderson Cooper is saying that CNN has never made any claims against President Trump . . . I’d put my research team to work on that if I had a research team, but since I don’t, I’ll just point out that 99 percent of CNN’s panel guests for the past two years made claims against President Trump, which I don’t think was accidental. There was a period of several months, for example, where Michael Avenatti was on CNN probably more often than Cooper himself, for no reason other than to make claims against President Trump. (Whatever happened to Avenatti, by the way? CNN seems to have lost interest in him.) There’s a technical distinction between making claims against someone and providing two years of airtime to other people making claims, but it’s not a credible distinction. Cooper also likes to say that President Trump was not cleared of Russian collusion,… Read more →
Those Weren’t Burglars, They Were “Confidential Informants”
F.B.I. Used Informant to Investigate Russia Ties to Campaign, Not to Spy, as Trump Claims — New York Times It’s too bad for Richard Nixon that he wasn’t able to come up with a similarly quick-witted explanation for Watergate. It reminded me of a joke: A man sees one of his neighbors scattering crumbs all around his house. “Why are you doing that?” he asked. “I’m keeping the tigers away.” “But there aren’t any tigers around here.” “That’s right. You see how well it works?” Read more →
Thomas Jefferson on Hillary Clinton
My fellow Americans — Hillary Clinton is still rattling off all the “reasons” she lost the 2016 presidential election: misogyny, the FBI, sexism, the NRA, Russia . . . To my knowledge, she has never correctly identified the actual culprits: the patriotic men and women of this country. Read more →
Overheard
“I thought that went out with zithers and tarot cards.” “I still use tarot cards.” “OK, I thought it went out with bread baking and Russian civilization . . . do you bake bread?” “I could bake bread.” Read more →
Russian Propaganda on Facebook
Facebook says that as many as 126 million people may have been exposed to 80,000 posts from a Russian propaganda group known as the Internet Research Agency over a two-year period. Who cares? People believe what they want to believe. Have you ever heard anyone say “I completely changed my mind on this issue after reading a Facebook post by nobody I know”? Or “I was going to vote for Candidate A and now I’m going to vote for Candidate B”? Neither have I . . . Read more →