Matt Taibbi something something Hunter Biden

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

When did he start loving Trump?

The left has always been skeptical of concentrated corporate power. Tech platforms suppressing a legitimate story in intrusive and frankly crazy ways (can't share the link in a DM) is a story in its own right.

The problem is that Taibbi seems to think that anyone who isn't right-wing cares about Hunter Biden in the slightest.

Okay...?

Here's the thing: The Hunter Biden laptop story wasn't suppressed. Check our archives, it was well discussed, the media talked about it and Fox News and all right-wing news affiliates were really pushing it. The reason it went nowhere is simple: People just didn't care. Now would they have cared if it wasn't promoted by Giuliani and the Trump campaign in such a deranged manner, if there weren't hordes of other issues people cared about far more, and if it didn't completely smell of desperation being trotted out then? Possibly. But that wasn't what happened.

[Yoda]

Serious question here.... And I admit my ignorance/lack of background info on this as I haven't actually bothered reading the tweets put out by Musk and Taibbi b/c I value my sanity.

So, is the right's new claim of persecution/1A rights-supposedly-being-violated centered on the fact that they were not allowed by Twitter's previous management to distribute a picture of a man's penis online, when the man in question did not wish the picture to be put online? Do I have this right? Pre-Musk twitter stopped the GOP from committing revenge porn basically and they think this is a violation of free speech?

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Serious question here.... And I admit my ignorance/lack of background info on this as I haven't actually bothered reading the tweets put out by Musk and Taibbi b/c I value my sanity.

So, is the right's new claim of persecution/1A rights-supposedly-being-violated centered on the fact that they were not allowed by Twitter's previous management to distribute a picture of a man's penis online, when the man in question did not wish the picture to be put online? Do I have this right? Pre-Musk twitter stopped the GOP from committing revenge porn basically and they think this is a violation of free speech?

I have trouble wrapping my mind around what passes for right-wing thought. And there appear to be several targets the right is aiming at, using Taibbi (who is acting as Musk's agent or employee, per an NDA he cannot or will not share details of) and his "reporting" here. (I use scare quotes because if I'm reading something that was written for someone, in accordance with their political agenda, under terms they dictated, that's not journalism, that's advertising copy.) As best I can tell, there are three or maybe four parallel tracks here:

1) (Taibbi) The Democrats pressured Twitter into spiking revenge porn of Hunter Biden, which is a First Amendment violation, because reasons.

2) (Taibbi & Musk) the Democrats and Big Tech (except Musk's Twitter 2.0) secretly colllude to control what the public sees.

2a) (Musk) I'm on the side of free speech and The People, because I selectively release information like how Twitter "handled" things for the Biden campaign and how Jack Dorsey's email included the word "pizza". (He's quite deliberately throwing cocaine-laced nuts to the squirrels here.)

3) (Trump) When I lose it's always someone else's fault. Today it's Twitter's fault.  This new information proves I really won in 2020!

4) (MAGATs) a desperate attempt to Frankenstein the Hunter Biden laptop story. (For reasons I cannot understand, the MAGAT GOP is absolutely obsessed with it. Surely the Afghanistan withdrawal, COVID, Ukraine or something in Biden's many decades of public life would serve them better than a fabricated attack on his son that non-rabid voters just don't care about?)

[Hindsight was 2020]

Serious question here.... And I admit my ignorance/lack of background info on this as I haven't actually bothered reading the tweets put out by Musk and Taibbi b/c I value my sanity.

So, is the right's new claim of persecution/1A rights-supposedly-being-violated centered on the fact that they were not allowed by Twitter's previous management to distribute a picture of a man's penis online, when the man in question did not wish the picture to be put online? Do I have this right? Pre-Musk twitter stopped the GOP from committing revenge porn basically and they think this is a violation of free speech?

No the 1A violation is more about being able to spam Twitter about the story in general with bots and foreign assistance like they did in 16 over the dick picks in of itself

[Fuzzy Bear Loves Christian Missionaries]

When did he start loving Trump?

The left has always been skeptical of concentrated corporate power. Tech platforms suppressing a legitimate story in intrusive and frankly crazy ways (can't share the link in a DM) is a story in its own right.

The problem is that Taibbi seems to think that anyone who isn't right-wing cares about Hunter Biden in the slightest.

Okay...?

Here's the thing: The Hunter Biden laptop story wasn't suppressed. Check our archives, it was well discussed, the media talked about it and Fox News and all right-wing news affiliates were really pushing it. The reason it went nowhere is simple: People just didn't care. Now would they have cared if it wasn't promoted by Giuliani and the Trump campaign in such a deranged manner, if there weren't hordes of other issues people cared about far more, and if it didn't completely smell of desperation being trotted out thenit? Possibly. But that wasn't what happened.

This is nonsense on its face.

Every single "mainstream" news outlet suppressed the story.  Furthermore, those same news outlets DID disseminate a story where over 50 "intelligence officials" stating that the laptop and its contents were "likely" to be "Russian Disinformation".  This is utter garbage, and we know this today, but the actions of intelligence officials, in concert with our legacy news networks (who were all too happy to help) prevented honest discussion and exploration of this issue prior to the the 2020 election.  And it's not reasonable to believe that the 50-plus "intelligence officials" honestly believe that the story was "Russian Disinformation".  The goal of these people was to prevent the reelection of Donald Trump by any means necessary.

To those of you who want to scream "BASELESS CONSPIRACY THEORIES!", one ought to consider that the "Intelligence Community" provided a "debunking" of the story (for political purposes) prior to the election.  The dishonesty of the media is bad enough, but these "intelligence officials" were experts in the field.  There actions were no less a violation of their professional ethos than a doctor stating that a decedent's death was "accidental" to cover up the guilt of a murderer.  

And what did these "intelligence officials" do in their careers as "intelligence professionals"?  One thing they did was to manipulate public opinion in foreign countries.  Transparency?  Lyman Kirkpatrick, the former Inspector General and Executive Director of the CIA remarked that the best Covert Operations are those that remain a secret "from Inception to Eternity".  The job of intelligence officials is not just to gather intelligence; it is also to control events through the use of sophisticated manipulation.  That's what these 50-plus intelligence officials were trained to do and participated in during their careers.

Do our "intelligence officials" act domestically?  Well, COINTELPRO did happen.  But even after the Church and Pike committees, these folks acted domestically.  In CASEY:  The Life and Secrets of William J. Casey from the OSS to the CIA, Joseph Persico reveals a story where right after Casey appointed an outsider, Max Hugel, as Deputy Director of Intelligence.  Here's Wikipedia's account of what happened:

Hugel was a close friend of William J. Casey, the director of the CIA. Hugel joined the CIA in January 1981 as Casey's special assistant, and Casey later appointed him as Deputy Director for Operations, the head of the CIA's Clandestine Service. After reporters from the Washington Post published allegations by two former business associates of improper or illegal stock trading during Hugel's time with Brother International, Hugel resigned while denying the allegations.[6][7] He later sued the two associates for libel, and won.[2]

Hugel sued the McNell brothers (who made the allegations) in Federal Court and won a libel judgement for $950k.  He also went to talk to James Jesus Angleton, the former Counterintelligence Director for the CIA, who told Hugel:  "Your troubles originated inside the DO (Operations Directorate for the CIA)"  (Source:  Joseph Persico and the aforesaid CASEY bio.)  Was this far-fetched?  Persico pointed out that the people in the DO that could have manipulated events to drive Hugel's ouster were the same folks that undermined foreign governments for a living, and suggested (logically, I might add) that getting an outsider boss fired wouldn't tax their abilities too much.  

So you'll forgive my skepticism when 50-plus "intelligence officials" are used to essentially sell the public on the idea that a laptop that provides evidence of Joe Biden's improper (and secretive) involvement in Hunter Biden's foreign businesses are "Russian Disinformation".  THAT was the baseless assertion, and that is being revealed today.  It's not "Russian Disinformation" and Americans not only should be interested in the whole of the Hunter Biden story; they should be interested as to the How and Why these 50-plus intel officials (still of them) came to the conclusion that they did.  THAT would be the basis for a valid Congressional investigation, particularly into the fact that so many "retired" intelligence officials still have Security Clearances.

The story is valid.  The information ought to be presented to the American people.  Those networks and news officials that said it was disinformation ought to not just admit they got it wrong, but recognize the disservice they did the American public in "debunking" a legitimate news story and apologize to the American public for doing so.  And the investigations ought to proceed.  The Hunter Biden story isn't about HUNTER Biden; it's about JOE Biden, about why he has denied involvement in his son's businesses, and about how much "access" Hunter Biden was able to sell based on who he was and is.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

When did he start loving Trump?

The left has always been skeptical of concentrated corporate power. Tech platforms suppressing a legitimate story in intrusive and frankly crazy ways (can't share the link in a DM) is a story in its own right.

The problem is that Taibbi seems to think that anyone who isn't right-wing cares about Hunter Biden in the slightest.

Okay...?

Here's the thing: The Hunter Biden laptop story wasn't suppressed. Check our archives, it was well discussed, the media talked about it and Fox News and all right-wing news affiliates were really pushing it. The reason it went nowhere is simple: People just didn't care. Now would they have cared if it wasn't promoted by Giuliani and the Trump campaign in such a deranged manner, if there weren't hordes of other issues people cared about far more, and if it didn't completely smell of desperation being trotted out thenit? Possibly. But that wasn't what happened.

This is nonsense on its face.

Every single "mainstream" news outlet suppressed the story.  Furthermore, those same news outlets DID disseminate a story where over 50 "intelligence officials" stating that the laptop and its contents were "likely" to be "Russian Disinformation".  This is utter garbage, and we know this today, but the actions of intelligence officials, in concert with our legacy news networks (who were all too happy to help) prevented honest discussion and exploration of this issue prior to the the 2020 election.  And it's not reasonable to believe that the 50-plus "intelligence officials" honestly believe that the story was "Russian Disinformation".  The goal of these people was to prevent the reelection of Donald Trump by any means necessary.

To those of you who want to scream "BASELESS CONSPIRACY THEORIES!", one ought to consider that the "Intelligence Community" provided a "debunking" of the story (for political purposes) prior to the election.  The dishonesty of the media is bad enough, but these "intelligence officials" were experts in the field.  There actions were no less a violation of their professional ethos than a doctor stating that a decedent's death was "accidental" to cover up the guilt of a murderer.  

And what did these "intelligence officials" do in their careers as "intelligence professionals"?  One thing they did was to manipulate public opinion in foreign countries.  Transparency?  Lyman Kirkpatrick, the former Inspector General and Executive Director of the CIA remarked that the best Covert Operations are those that remain a secret "from Inception to Eternity".  The job of intelligence officials is not just to gather intelligence; it is also to control events through the use of sophisticated manipulation.  That's what these 50-plus intelligence officials were trained to do and participated in during their careers.

Do our "intelligence officials" act domestically?  Well, COINTELPRO did happen.  But even after the Church and Pike committees, these folks acted domestically.  In CASEY:  The Life and Secrets of William J. Casey from the OSS to the CIA, Joseph Persico reveals a story where right after Casey appointed an outsider, Max Hugel, as Deputy Director of Intelligence.  Here's Wikipedia's account of what happened:

Hugel was a close friend of William J. Casey, the director of the CIA. Hugel joined the CIA in January 1981 as Casey's special assistant, and Casey later appointed him as Deputy Director for Operations, the head of the CIA's Clandestine Service. After reporters from the Washington Post published allegations by two former business associates of improper or illegal stock trading during Hugel's time with Brother International, Hugel resigned while denying the allegations.[6][7] He later sued the two associates for libel, and won.[2]

Hugel sued the McNell brothers (who made the allegations) in Federal Court and won a libel judgement for $950k.  He also went to talk to James Jesus Angleton, the former Counterintelligence Director for the CIA, who told Hugel:  "Your troubles originated inside the DO (Operations Directorate for the CIA)"  (Source:  Joseph Persico and the aforesaid CASEY bio.)  Was this far-fetched?  Persico pointed out that the people in the DO that could have manipulated events to drive Hugel's ouster were the same folks that undermined foreign governments for a living, and suggested (logically, I might add) that getting an outsider boss fired wouldn't tax their abilities too much.  

So you'll forgive my skepticism when 50-plus "intelligence officials" are used to essentially sell the public on the idea that a laptop that provides evidence of Joe Biden's improper (and secretive) involvement in Hunter Biden's foreign businesses are "Russian Disinformation".  THAT was the baseless assertion, and that is being revealed today.  It's not "Russian Disinformation" and Americans not only should be interested in the whole of the Hunter Biden story; they should be interested as to the How and Why these 50-plus intel officials (still of them) came to the conclusion that they did.  THAT would be the basis for a valid Congressional investigation, particularly into the fact that so many "retired" intelligence officials still have Security Clearances.

The story is valid.  The information ought to be presented to the American people.  Those networks and news officials that said it was disinformation ought to not just admit they got it wrong, but recognize the disservice they did the American public in "debunking" a legitimate news story and apologize to the American public for doing so.  And the investigations ought to proceed.  The Hunter Biden story isn't about HUNTER Biden; it's about JOE Biden, about why he has denied involvement in his son's businesses, and about how much "access" Hunter Biden was able to sell based on who he was and is.

This ought to be right up your alley, then (and presumably a cause of grave concern):

https://twitter.com/KevinMKruse/status/1598832334349881346

[Fuzzy Bear Loves Christian Missionaries]

When did he start loving Trump?

The left has always been skeptical of concentrated corporate power. Tech platforms suppressing a legitimate story in intrusive and frankly crazy ways (can't share the link in a DM) is a story in its own right.

The problem is that Taibbi seems to think that anyone who isn't right-wing cares about Hunter Biden in the slightest.

Okay...?

Here's the thing: The Hunter Biden laptop story wasn't suppressed. Check our archives, it was well discussed, the media talked about it and Fox News and all right-wing news affiliates were really pushing it. The reason it went nowhere is simple: People just didn't care. Now would they have cared if it wasn't promoted by Giuliani and the Trump campaign in such a deranged manner, if there weren't hordes of other issues people cared about far more, and if it didn't completely smell of desperation being trotted out thenit? Possibly. But that wasn't what happened.

This is nonsense on its face.

Every single "mainstream" news outlet suppressed the story.  Furthermore, those same news outlets DID disseminate a story where over 50 "intelligence officials" stating that the laptop and its contents were "likely" to be "Russian Disinformation".  This is utter garbage, and we know this today, but the actions of intelligence officials, in concert with our legacy news networks (who were all too happy to help) prevented honest discussion and exploration of this issue prior to the the 2020 election.  And it's not reasonable to believe that the 50-plus "intelligence officials" honestly believe that the story was "Russian Disinformation".  The goal of these people was to prevent the reelection of Donald Trump by any means necessary.

To those of you who want to scream "BASELESS CONSPIRACY THEORIES!", one ought to consider that the "Intelligence Community" provided a "debunking" of the story (for political purposes) prior to the election.  The dishonesty of the media is bad enough, but these "intelligence officials" were experts in the field.  There actions were no less a violation of their professional ethos than a doctor stating that a decedent's death was "accidental" to cover up the guilt of a murderer.  

And what did these "intelligence officials" do in their careers as "intelligence professionals"?  One thing they did was to manipulate public opinion in foreign countries.  Transparency?  Lyman Kirkpatrick, the former Inspector General and Executive Director of the CIA remarked that the best Covert Operations are those that remain a secret "from Inception to Eternity".  The job of intelligence officials is not just to gather intelligence; it is also to control events through the use of sophisticated manipulation.  That's what these 50-plus intelligence officials were trained to do and participated in during their careers.

Do our "intelligence officials" act domestically?  Well, COINTELPRO did happen.  But even after the Church and Pike committees, these folks acted domestically.  In CASEY:  The Life and Secrets of William J. Casey from the OSS to the CIA, Joseph Persico reveals a story where right after Casey appointed an outsider, Max Hugel, as Deputy Director of Intelligence.  Here's Wikipedia's account of what happened:

Hugel was a close friend of William J. Casey, the director of the CIA. Hugel joined the CIA in January 1981 as Casey's special assistant, and Casey later appointed him as Deputy Director for Operations, the head of the CIA's Clandestine Service. After reporters from the Washington Post published allegations by two former business associates of improper or illegal stock trading during Hugel's time with Brother International, Hugel resigned while denying the allegations.[6][7] He later sued the two associates for libel, and won.[2]

Hugel sued the McNell brothers (who made the allegations) in Federal Court and won a libel judgement for $950k.  He also went to talk to James Jesus Angleton, the former Counterintelligence Director for the CIA, who told Hugel:  "Your troubles originated inside the DO (Operations Directorate for the CIA)"  (Source:  Joseph Persico and the aforesaid CASEY bio.)  Was this far-fetched?  Persico pointed out that the people in the DO that could have manipulated events to drive Hugel's ouster were the same folks that undermined foreign governments for a living, and suggested (logically, I might add) that getting an outsider boss fired wouldn't tax their abilities too much.  

So you'll forgive my skepticism when 50-plus "intelligence officials" are used to essentially sell the public on the idea that a laptop that provides evidence of Joe Biden's improper (and secretive) involvement in Hunter Biden's foreign businesses are "Russian Disinformation".  THAT was the baseless assertion, and that is being revealed today.  It's not "Russian Disinformation" and Americans not only should be interested in the whole of the Hunter Biden story; they should be interested as to the How and Why these 50-plus intel officials (still of them) came to the conclusion that they did.  THAT would be the basis for a valid Congressional investigation, particularly into the fact that so many "retired" intelligence officials still have Security Clearances.

The story is valid.  The information ought to be presented to the American people.  Those networks and news officials that said it was disinformation ought to not just admit they got it wrong, but recognize the disservice they did the American public in "debunking" a legitimate news story and apologize to the American public for doing so.  And the investigations ought to proceed.  The Hunter Biden story isn't about HUNTER Biden; it's about JOE Biden, about why he has denied involvement in his son's businesses, and about how much "access" Hunter Biden was able to sell based on who he was and is.

This ought to be right up your alley, then (and presumably a cause of grave concern):

https://twitter.com/KevinMKruse/status/1598832334349881346

We can investigate that too.  Of course, that's whataboutism of the worst order, but since you're on the Left you get to do that freely here, and without moderators entertaining the idea that you are derailing threads.

Meanwhile, let it be noted that you did not contradict a single word of my last post. 

[Donerail]

When did he start loving Trump?

The left has always been skeptical of concentrated corporate power. Tech platforms suppressing a legitimate story in intrusive and frankly crazy ways (can't share the link in a DM) is a story in its own right.

The problem is that Taibbi seems to think that anyone who isn't right-wing cares about Hunter Biden in the slightest.

Okay...?

Here's the thing: The Hunter Biden laptop story wasn't suppressed. Check our archives, it was well discussed, the media talked about it and Fox News and all right-wing news affiliates were really pushing it.

It's weird that Jack (or apparently not Jack, just some mid-level twitter underling) can throw a switch and suddenly nobody can DM a link, man. That's all I'm saying. Not about who cares about the story — my response to PR was about why Taibbi, specifically, is doing this.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I still don't understand exactly what was or is supposedly on Hunter Biden's laptop. Can someone explain the exact allegation to me in as neutral and succinct a way as possible?

[Vosem]

I still don't understand exactly what was or is supposedly on Hunter Biden's laptop. Can someone explain the exact allegation to me in as neutral and succinct a way as possible?

I'm not sure Tablet Mag is especially neutral, but if you want a high-brow right-wing take about this (which persuaded me to care about it), then this is what I've shared in real life to get people to care about this. In a sentence, the information suggests that Hunter and his uncle James were hired to fake jobs by foreign corporations as a roundabout way of bribing Joe Biden himself, and that Joe himself had knowledge of/participated in organizing these jobs; information about other government officials taking bribes, including leading FBI members; allegations of pedophilia against Biden family members (yes, really); and various at-this-point passe pieces of evidence regarding drug use/sexual impropriety on the part of Hunter himself.

Lowbrow right-wing media has mostly focused on the last part of this, which you could imagine being a bigger story in a different media environment (certainly much spicier than the stuff which brought down Wiener, which itself contributed to electing Trump in 2016), but probably the bigger story is the first part.

[H.E. VOLODYMYR ZELENKSYY]

It’s hilarious how the right wing lives in its own world where they tweet stuff out like “Joe Biden is the Big Guy” as if normal people even know about this. I love watching them play in their little world.

[Landslide Lyndon]

This is nonsense on its face.

Every single "mainstream" news outlet suppressed the story.  Furthermore, those same news outlets DID disseminate a story where over 50 "intelligence officials" stating that the laptop and its contents were "likely" to be "Russian Disinformation".  This is utter garbage, and we know this today, but the actions of intelligence officials, in concert with our legacy news networks (who were all too happy to help) prevented honest discussion and exploration of this issue prior to the the 2020 election.  And it's not reasonable to believe that the 50-plus "intelligence officials" honestly believe that the story was "Russian Disinformation".  The goal of these people was to prevent the reelection of Donald Trump by any means necessary.

To those of you who want to scream "BASELESS CONSPIRACY THEORIES!", one ought to consider that the "Intelligence Community" provided a "debunking" of the story (for political purposes) prior to the election.  The dishonesty of the media is bad enough, but these "intelligence officials" were experts in the field.  There actions were no less a violation of their professional ethos than a doctor stating that a decedent's death was "accidental" to cover up the guilt of a murderer.  

And what did these "intelligence officials" do in their careers as "intelligence professionals"?  One thing they did was to manipulate public opinion in foreign countries.  Transparency?  Lyman Kirkpatrick, the former Inspector General and Executive Director of the CIA remarked that the best Covert Operations are those that remain a secret "from Inception to Eternity".  The job of intelligence officials is not just to gather intelligence; it is also to control events through the use of sophisticated manipulation.  That's what these 50-plus intelligence officials were trained to do and participated in during their careers.

Do our "intelligence officials" act domestically?  Well, COINTELPRO did happen.  But even after the Church and Pike committees, these folks acted domestically.  In CASEY:  The Life and Secrets of William J. Casey from the OSS to the CIA, Joseph Persico reveals a story where right after Casey appointed an outsider, Max Hugel, as Deputy Director of Intelligence.  Here's Wikipedia's account of what happened:

Hugel was a close friend of William J. Casey, the director of the CIA. Hugel joined the CIA in January 1981 as Casey's special assistant, and Casey later appointed him as Deputy Director for Operations, the head of the CIA's Clandestine Service. After reporters from the Washington Post published allegations by two former business associates of improper or illegal stock trading during Hugel's time with Brother International, Hugel resigned while denying the allegations.[6][7] He later sued the two associates for libel, and won.[2]

Hugel sued the McNell brothers (who made the allegations) in Federal Court and won a libel judgement for $950k.  He also went to talk to James Jesus Angleton, the former Counterintelligence Director for the CIA, who told Hugel:  "Your troubles originated inside the DO (Operations Directorate for the CIA)"  (Source:  Joseph Persico and the aforesaid CASEY bio.)  Was this far-fetched?  Persico pointed out that the people in the DO that could have manipulated events to drive Hugel's ouster were the same folks that undermined foreign governments for a living, and suggested (logically, I might add) that getting an outsider boss fired wouldn't tax their abilities too much.  

So you'll forgive my skepticism when 50-plus "intelligence officials" are used to essentially sell the public on the idea that a laptop that provides evidence of Joe Biden's improper (and secretive) involvement in Hunter Biden's foreign businesses are "Russian Disinformation".  THAT was the baseless assertion, and that is being revealed today.  It's not "Russian Disinformation" and Americans not only should be interested in the whole of the Hunter Biden story; they should be interested as to the How and Why these 50-plus intel officials (still of them) came to the conclusion that they did.  THAT would be the basis for a valid Congressional investigation, particularly into the fact that so many "retired" intelligence officials still have Security Clearances.

The story is valid.  The information ought to be presented to the American people.  Those networks and news officials that said it was disinformation ought to not just admit they got it wrong, but recognize the disservice they did the American public in "debunking" a legitimate news story and apologize to the American public for doing so.  And the investigations ought to proceed.  The Hunter Biden story isn't about HUNTER Biden; it's about JOE Biden, about why he has denied involvement in his son's businesses, and about how much "access" Hunter Biden was able to sell based on who he was and is.

Fuzzy is a conservative Christian, angry because the powers that be denied him the chance to see Hunter Biden's dick.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

When did he start loving Trump?

The left has always been skeptical of concentrated corporate power. Tech platforms suppressing a legitimate story in intrusive and frankly crazy ways (can't share the link in a DM) is a story in its own right.

The problem is that Taibbi seems to think that anyone who isn't right-wing cares about Hunter Biden in the slightest.

Okay...?

Here's the thing: The Hunter Biden laptop story wasn't suppressed. Check our archives, it was well discussed, the media talked about it and Fox News and all right-wing news affiliates were really pushing it.

It's weird that Jack (or apparently not Jack, just some mid-level twitter underling) can throw a switch and suddenly nobody can DM a link, man. That's all I'm saying. Not about who cares about the story — my response to PR was about why Taibbi, specifically, is doing this.

It's weird that the did that about what amounted to revenge porn?

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

When did he start loving Trump?

The left has always been skeptical of concentrated corporate power. Tech platforms suppressing a legitimate story in intrusive and frankly crazy ways (can't share the link in a DM) is a story in its own right.

The problem is that Taibbi seems to think that anyone who isn't right-wing cares about Hunter Biden in the slightest.

Okay...?

Here's the thing: The Hunter Biden laptop story wasn't suppressed. Check our archives, it was well discussed, the media talked about it and Fox News and all right-wing news affiliates were really pushing it. The reason it went nowhere is simple: People just didn't care. Now would they have cared if it wasn't promoted by Giuliani and the Trump campaign in such a deranged manner, if there weren't hordes of other issues people cared about far more, and if it didn't completely smell of desperation being trotted out thenit? Possibly. But that wasn't what happened.

This is nonsense on its face.

Every single "mainstream" news outlet suppressed the story.  Furthermore, those same news outlets DID disseminate a story where over 50 "intelligence officials" stating that the laptop and its contents were "likely" to be "Russian Disinformation".  This is utter garbage, and we know this today, but the actions of intelligence officials, in concert with our legacy news networks (who were all too happy to help) prevented honest discussion and exploration of this issue prior to the the 2020 election.  And it's not reasonable to believe that the 50-plus "intelligence officials" honestly believe that the story was "Russian Disinformation".  The goal of these people was to prevent the reelection of Donald Trump by any means necessary.

To those of you who want to scream "BASELESS CONSPIRACY THEORIES!", one ought to consider that the "Intelligence Community" provided a "debunking" of the story (for political purposes) prior to the election.  The dishonesty of the media is bad enough, but these "intelligence officials" were experts in the field.  There actions were no less a violation of their professional ethos than a doctor stating that a decedent's death was "accidental" to cover up the guilt of a murderer.  

And what did these "intelligence officials" do in their careers as "intelligence professionals"?  One thing they did was to manipulate public opinion in foreign countries.  Transparency?  Lyman Kirkpatrick, the former Inspector General and Executive Director of the CIA remarked that the best Covert Operations are those that remain a secret "from Inception to Eternity".  The job of intelligence officials is not just to gather intelligence; it is also to control events through the use of sophisticated manipulation.  That's what these 50-plus intelligence officials were trained to do and participated in during their careers.

Do our "intelligence officials" act domestically?  Well, COINTELPRO did happen.  But even after the Church and Pike committees, these folks acted domestically.  In CASEY:  The Life and Secrets of William J. Casey from the OSS to the CIA, Joseph Persico reveals a story where right after Casey appointed an outsider, Max Hugel, as Deputy Director of Intelligence.  Here's Wikipedia's account of what happened:

Hugel was a close friend of William J. Casey, the director of the CIA. Hugel joined the CIA in January 1981 as Casey's special assistant, and Casey later appointed him as Deputy Director for Operations, the head of the CIA's Clandestine Service. After reporters from the Washington Post published allegations by two former business associates of improper or illegal stock trading during Hugel's time with Brother International, Hugel resigned while denying the allegations.[6][7] He later sued the two associates for libel, and won.[2]

Hugel sued the McNell brothers (who made the allegations) in Federal Court and won a libel judgement for $950k.  He also went to talk to James Jesus Angleton, the former Counterintelligence Director for the CIA, who told Hugel:  "Your troubles originated inside the DO (Operations Directorate for the CIA)"  (Source:  Joseph Persico and the aforesaid CASEY bio.)  Was this far-fetched?  Persico pointed out that the people in the DO that could have manipulated events to drive Hugel's ouster were the same folks that undermined foreign governments for a living, and suggested (logically, I might add) that getting an outsider boss fired wouldn't tax their abilities too much.  

So you'll forgive my skepticism when 50-plus "intelligence officials" are used to essentially sell the public on the idea that a laptop that provides evidence of Joe Biden's improper (and secretive) involvement in Hunter Biden's foreign businesses are "Russian Disinformation".  THAT was the baseless assertion, and that is being revealed today.  It's not "Russian Disinformation" and Americans not only should be interested in the whole of the Hunter Biden story; they should be interested as to the How and Why these 50-plus intel officials (still of them) came to the conclusion that they did.  THAT would be the basis for a valid Congressional investigation, particularly into the fact that so many "retired" intelligence officials still have Security Clearances.

The story is valid.  The information ought to be presented to the American people.  Those networks and news officials that said it was disinformation ought to not just admit they got it wrong, but recognize the disservice they did the American public in "debunking" a legitimate news story and apologize to the American public for doing so.  And the investigations ought to proceed.  The Hunter Biden story isn't about HUNTER Biden; it's about JOE Biden, about why he has denied involvement in his son's businesses, and about how much "access" Hunter Biden was able to sell based on who he was and is.

This ought to be right up your alley, then (and presumably a cause of grave concern):

https://twitter.com/KevinMKruse/status/1598832334349881346

We can investigate that too.  Of course, that's whataboutism of the worst order, but since you're on the Left you get to do that freely here, and without moderators entertaining the idea that you are derailing threads.

Meanwhile, let it be noted that you did not contradict a single word of my last post. 

Why would I bother with your post, when you summed it up so well wkth your opening sentence?

And what you so casually dismiss as whataboutism is a clear illustration of Republicans' lack of good faith here - brushing aside well documented payment of billions to a member of Mr. Trump's immediate family, but deeply concerned about the contents of a hard drive full of revenge porn doctored and peddled by Mr. Giuliani. The only thing funnier than Republicans pretending their concern for the contents of "Hunter Biden's laptop" are real is how the same.Republicans think anyone else cares, when what they're peddling doesn't even rise to the (still abysmal) "Clinton was a drug kingpin for the CIA" level of credibility.

[GeneralMacArthur]

I still don't understand exactly what was or is supposedly on Hunter Biden's laptop. Can someone explain the exact allegation to me in as neutral and succinct a way as possible?

I'm not sure Tablet Mag is especially neutral, but if you want a high-brow right-wing take about this (which persuaded me to care about it), then this is what I've shared in real life to get people to care about this. In a sentence, the information suggests that Hunter and his uncle James were hired to fake jobs by foreign corporations as a roundabout way of bribing Joe Biden himself, and that Joe himself had knowledge of/participated in organizing these jobs; information about other government officials taking bribes, including leading FBI members; allegations of pedophilia against Biden family members (yes, really); and various at-this-point passe pieces of evidence regarding drug use/sexual impropriety on the part of Hunter himself.

Lowbrow right-wing media has mostly focused on the last part of this, which you could imagine being a bigger story in a different media environment (certainly much spicier than the stuff which brought down Wiener, which itself contributed to electing Trump in 2016), but probably the bigger story is the first part.

I don't see how this could possibly be convincing to anyone who has actually followed the news even lightly over the last three years.  Most of it is just a revisiting of the Burisma "scandal" that's already been debunked a thousand times over.  Most of the rest is just going into detail about a couple somewhat-nefarious people Hunter Biden had very loose business connections with.  And it's all buried under a stinking heap of insinuation, guesswork, "why won't the media tell you this", and ridiculous exaggeration.  Like, this is a really bad article.

And what's more, you promised that it was going to include information about James Biden, proof that the jobs Hunter worked were fake, information about how those jobs were used to bribe Joe Biden, etc. and it doesn't include any of that.  Not even via insinuation.  But a blue avatar wouldn't shamelessly lie about what's in an article, expecting nobody on the forum to actually read it, would they?

[GeneralMacArthur]

One other thing that's being lost in this whole kerfuffle is that at the time when the Hunter Biden laptop story was first making the rounds, which is when Twitter blocked the story and media orgs refused to report on it, the only information available was given to the media from Jack Maxey, who said he got it from Rudy Giuliani, who said he got it from John Paul Mac Isaac, who said he saw it when he was doing a hard drive transfer from Hunter Biden's laptop.

They didn't produce the laptop.  They didn't produce the hard drive.  They didn't produce any actual documents.  The media was only given the word of Rudy Giuliani that he'd totally seen some giant scandal exposed on a laptop that totally exists, and then expected to treat that as legitimate.

So obviously the media said, no, we're not taking Rudy Giuliani's word.  If you want us to take this story seriously, give us the laptop.  And when Rudy refused, they said, yeah this is bullsh-t, you're just making this up, we're not running wall-to-wall coverage on this the week before the election and it's embarrassing that you thought there was any chance we would.

So that's the "big media cover-up" everyone's talking about.  Perfectly reasonable decision to not just let Rudy Giuliani make stuff up and dictate a national news story the week before an election.

Of course, every single right-wing platform ran the story, along with heaps upon heaps of speculation, insinuation or outright lies.  All without a shred of evidence that any of it was actually true.  And then wrote headlines that were just blatant lies, but designed to be seen by tons of eyeballs on social media and create the impression of legitimacy and truth.  That was the entire strategy.  Social media sites had to choose whether to be willing partners in this plot -- essentially acting as publishers and launderers for a huge right-wing bullsh-t campaign that the actual media had already refused to cover because it's was just Rudy making stuff up.  Most of them chose to block those links instead, refusing to be taken advantage of.

[emailking]

This is what Trump thinks we need to terminate the Constitution over, that Twitter wouldn't allow this story to promulgate on its site.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

What right-wingers and contrarian leftists need to learn (and will eventually as a harsh lesson) is that there's no unringing the bell on this story. Rudy Giuliani and the Trump campaign already went about Hunter Biden in such a way that inoculated the majority of the public to caring about it, and you're not going to overcome that now by bringing up something about Twitter suppression or whatever. They might as well try campaigning on Hillary's emails in 2024.

[Stranger in a strange land]

So lets get down to it: do the laptop contents (if that is indeed what they are) show that Hunter actually did anything illegal, and if so, what?

[Vosem]

What right-wingers and contrarian leftists need to learn (and will eventually as a harsh lesson) is that there's no unringing the bell on this story. Rudy Giuliani and the Trump campaign already went about Hunter Biden in such a way that inoculated the majority of the public to caring about it, and you're not going to overcome that now by bringing up something about Twitter suppression or whatever. They might as well try campaigning on Hillary's emails in 2024.

A lot of the rhetoric about this story reminds me of the rhetoric surrounding the Benghazi investigation and Hillary's emails, which at the time (and bizarrely to some extent to this day) were subject to similar rhetoric regarding nobody caring (and at least on Benghazi, the polls mostly concurred with the Democratic narrative for years). Yet the investigations were largely successful politically. Hillary's favorables were tanked and she lost the 2016 election; the only price Republicans paid, maybe, is having a close call in CA-49 in 2016. Even then that might just have been demographics catching up in a D-trending area.

You can also think that allegations of corruption are worth investigating in a principled way. (You can also fight the idea that nobody cares; I think the evidence that swing voters do when it's presented in a certain way clearly exists.) But even if it's true that nobody outside of hardcore Republican partisans cares, that just doesn't mean the investigation isn't worth pursuing; it has happened in the past that voters have started caring about scandals that only hardcore partisans of one party or another cared about when some further shoe drops, or some campaign develops a strategy for getting voters to care, often many years later.

[Landslide Lyndon]

What right-wingers and contrarian leftists need to learn (and will eventually as a harsh lesson) is that there's no unringing the bell on this story. Rudy Giuliani and the Trump campaign already went about Hunter Biden in such a way that inoculated the majority of the public to caring about it, and you're not going to overcome that now by bringing up something about Twitter suppression or whatever. They might as well try campaigning on Hillary's emails in 2024.

A lot of the rhetoric about this story reminds me of the rhetoric surrounding the Benghazi investigation and Hillary's emails, which at the time (and bizarrely to some extent to this day) were subject to similar rhetoric regarding nobody caring (and at least on Benghazi, the polls mostly concurred with the Democratic narrative for years). Yet the investigations were largely successful politically. Hillary's favorables were tanked and she lost the 2016 election; the only price Republicans paid, maybe, is having a close call in CA-49 in 2016. Even then that might just have been demographics catching up in a D-trending area.

You can also think that allegations of corruption are worth investigating in a principled way. (You can also fight the idea that nobody cares; I think the evidence that swing voters do when it's presented in a certain way clearly exists.) But even if it's true that nobody outside of hardcore Republican partisans cares, that just doesn't mean the investigation isn't worth pursuing; it has happened in the past that voters have started caring about scandals that only hardcore partisans of one party or another cared about when some further shoe drops, or some campaign develops a strategy for getting voters to care, often many years later.

The difference is that the media were hellbent to bring down Clinton and played along with Republicans.
But four years later they had no intention to do the same with Biden and ignored the Hunter's laptop story.

[Ferguson97]

A lot of the rhetoric about this story reminds me of the rhetoric surrounding the Benghazi investigation and Hillary's emails, which at the time (and bizarrely to some extent to this day) were subject to similar rhetoric regarding nobody caring (and at least on Benghazi, the polls mostly concurred with the Democratic narrative for years). Yet the investigations were largely successful politically. Hillary's favorables were tanked and she lost the 2016 election; the only price Republicans paid, maybe, is having a close call in CA-49 in 2016. Even then that might just have been demographics catching up in a D-trending area.

You can also think that allegations of corruption are worth investigating in a principled way. (You can also fight the idea that nobody cares; I think the evidence that swing voters do when it's presented in a certain way clearly exists.) But even if it's true that nobody outside of hardcore Republican partisans cares, that just doesn't mean the investigation isn't worth pursuing; it has happened in the past that voters have started caring about scandals that only hardcore partisans of one party or another cared about when some further shoe drops, or some campaign develops a strategy for getting voters to care, often many years later.

Benghazi was an effective line of attack for Republicans because it involved the deaths of Americans and the blame was placed on a woman who had been a boogeyman for two decades.

The best that Republicans can come up with about Hunter is something vague about a business dealing. It's just never going to have the same kind of pull that Benghazi did.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Nobody cared about Benghazi by the time the hearings rolled around.  People cared about it for a week or two during the 2012 election and then stopped caring despite 24/7 Republican efforts to try and make them care.

The only reason the Benghazi hearings were "successful" is because they accidentally uncovered the Hillary Clinton had sent and received e-mails from a private e-mail server.

The only reason the private e-mail server issue was "successful" is because the media eagerly devoured every single phony story the right-wing media complex put out about it, and obsequiously served as a tool for an enemy state's intelligence operation.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

https://twitter.com/DarkBrandon2020/status/1599021508931616768