Feb. 21, 2024 - GOP's Biden lies were made in Russia

… Impeachment lies … Wisconsin maps … Russia space-nukes … Trump campaign cash crisis …

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Biden Bullshit Was Borscht

The lies at the heart of Republican efforts to impeach Pres. Joe Biden originated with Russian intelligence, the FBI’s informant claims, according to a prosecution filing yesterday.

The filing argued against the release on bail of former FBI informant Alexander Smirnov, urging the court not to trust him because his claims “were false, as the Defendant knew,” and “Smirnov admitted that officials associated with Russian intelligence were involved in passing a story about Businessperson 1.”

The reference to “Businessperson 1” appears to allude to Biden’s coolest nickname so far.

It’s not clear what specific “story” the officials passed to Smirnov, but in June 2020, Smirnov told the FBI that the Ukrainian energy company Burisma had given Businessperson 1 and his son, Hunter Businessperson 1, $5 million each.

Prosecutors argued that Smirnov is a flight risk because “Smirnov's contact with officials affiliated with Russian intelligence … are extensive and extremely recent, and Smirnov had the intention of meeting with one of these officials on his upcoming planned overseas travel."

If the informant’s claim is true … this time … it would mean that Russian intelligence succeeded … yet another time … in fucking with us.

To my unalloyed horror — and I’m old enough that most of my horror is pretty fuckin’ alloyed — when I checked the big news sites last night to find their writeups on this, some didn’t even have the story on their homepage. To CNN’s credit, they did, but even there, the Russian lies that the entire Republican Party boosted in order to impeach the U.S. president were apparently less newsworthy than a single Republican saying true things:

I went to the New York Times and couldn’t find the story at all on their homepage.

So I clicked through to the U.S. section … where as you can see it was below protesters saying something they’ve said before, and below Trump saying something that even the headline says he’s said before:

I’m not sure what the hell is going on here in terms of news judgment. One possibility: The filing’s ambiguity about exactly what Smirnov was fed by Russian intelligence led the U.S. media editors-that-be to keep their powder dry, the exact same way they absolutely DID NOT do with the initial accusations.

This absolute social failure to immunize ourselves against falling for bullshit reminded me of that AI video thing you may have seen recently. Or did you see it?!?

Last week, OpenAI announced a new app called Sora, capable of producing videos that aren’t just Sora lifelike, they’re strikingly lifelike. In other words, photo-realistic AI is about to pack its bags and move out of the Uncanny Valley so it can live rent-free in our heads for the rest of eternity or until Wall Street starts buying up heads along with every other residential property.

So what was my big epiphany about Sora that applies to Russian bullshit that Republicans repeat and that media amplify? That we have to stop believing shit and we have to stop being certain about shit.

We’re at a rough moment in human social evolution. Millions of us fall prey to confirmation bias every day because our instincts suck and yet our culture worships our instincts, telling us to go with our gut, which is asinine because we don’t have any brains in our guts unless we’re Hannibal Lecter.

And now they tell us we can’t even believe our eyes, which are even closer to our brains than our guts are? Well, that’s right. We can’t. Which, I hope, is a good thing.

It’ll probably take years, if not a whole generation, for humanity to truly internalize this, but like it or not we’re going to learn to suspend judgment. However painful the lessons, we’re going to learn not to leap to conclusions (goddamnit, I should have used that for the uncanny valley line).

And before you non-Republican newsfuckers tell yourselves you’re immune, I want to flag something that happened last week which saw the left — or at least Democrats — pull the same shit.

MSNBC’s Katy Tur asked two guests to assess whether it was fair to charge D4FRFP¹ Donald Trump with defrauding his lenders. Lefty Twitter lost its mind, pounding Tur and incredulous that she could ask this.

Implicit was the assumption that Tur was defending Trump. Now, I can’t know her motives, but neither can her critics. And it’s more than possible that she was presenting his legal defense in an intellectually honest fashion because she wanted people to hear the reasons it was bullshit. It’s also possible she hadn’t come to any conclusion about whether it was fair and genuinely wanted informed responses.

The point is, we don’t know her motives — and I can assure you from my years in TV news that presenting a line of reasoning for analysis doesn’t mean the anchor agrees with it. And yet, there were Twitter’s extant smart people, 100% sure they knew what Tur thought.

If we’re really, really lucky, Russian Pres. Vladimir Putin and OpenAI are about to teach humanity — really quickly, I hope — to stop reaching conclusions, to suspend judgment, to reject certainty.

Because one way or another, sooner or later, humanity has to relocate into the one place still hospitable to intelligent life: the uncharted new territory known as uncertainty. Because that’s the only place we can survive. (I’m sure of it!)

EXHIBIT A Never-Trumpers immediately leapt to wild conclusions last night about all the Russia stuff. The impeachment “was a Russian op.” And “Putin successfully co-opted the GOP.” We don’t know any of that yet, by a long stretch, and have no more reason to believe it than the GOP did to believe Smirnov. 

META BULLSHIT This is why I ignore some stories. Because it’s so tempting to draw conclusions instantly … even about things that eventually will be definitively proven or refuted in time. I believe it was Soren Kierkegaard who once said, “Chillax.” 

Wisconsin Unfucks Itself

After more than a decade of being contorted worse than the average day’s logic of Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), the state of Wisconsin on Monday unfucked itself in a legislative process that involved Republicans sucking it.

After Wisconsin voters flipped the state Supreme Court from Republican-controlled to Democratic-controlled last year, the new court finally took a look at the epically gerrymandered maps Wisconsin has had for years and said in a court ruling, “Yeah, no.” The maps in question are for seats in state government.

Republicans who (still) control the (gerrymandered) Legislature had two choices: They could pass a map sufficiently unfucked that it could win the signature of Gov. Tony Evers (D-WI) or they could roll the dice and see what kind of map the state Supreme Court came up with.

After weighing their options, Republican legislators opted to suck it, passing a map that Evers would sign even though it didn’t rob Democratic voters of proportionate representation. Evers signed it into law last night.

Naturally, this was a case of asymmetrical political warfare, as the maps that Evers gave the Republicans to choose from were fair rather than Democrat-favoring. However, when all you know is cheating, the return of fairness hurts. So Republican state Sen. Van Wanggaard complained, “It was a matter of choosing to be stabbed, shot, poisoned or led to the guillotine. We chose to be stabbed, so we can live to fight another day.”

Worth noting: By making so many more districts competitive, that could lead to what state Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler called “reverse coattails.” Specifically, Democratic turnout could be driven up by the fact that more Democrats now have a chance in these districts, and that could help Pres. Joe Biden win this purple state in November. Election consequences have election consequences!

White House Feared Russian Space-Nuke Leaks

Remember that whole nukes-in-space thing Russia’s working on to take out satellites? The thing that was leaked last week? The bag out of which House Intelligence Committee Chair Mike Turner (R-OH) let the cat?

Turner defended his loose lips, despite the potential ship-sinking, by claiming he blabbed because he was afraid Pres. Joe Biden was “sleepwalking into an international crisis.” Sleepwalking! Get it? Biden’s old! (Me, I’ve barely got the energy for wake-walking, so consider me impressed if Biden’s got the energy after presidenting all day and campaigning to use the one time every day he can get some fucking rest to bounce out of bed and go for a stroll into an international crisis.)

Anyway, we’re now getting pushback, via leaks, via Politico, against Turner’s implication. Specifically, that the Biden administration isn’t happy about Turner’s feline-liberation operations and had reasons for keeping ll this secret. Unnamed officials are telling Politico why, and if you wanna play along at home, you, too, can see whether their explanations make sense.

First is the classic: The Biden administration feared that “if the details of the intelligence were revealed, the source of that information might dry up.”

But also, the White House was pursuing diplomatic efforts to get the Russians to back off plans to test the new technology. The U.S. had reached out to Russia directly, as well as to potential intermediaries China and India, about the matter.

Those unnamed officials told Politico that Russia has not responded to U.S. diplomatic outreach since Turner opened his face. But here’s where it gets fun: Those officials won’t say whether Russia was responding before Turner’s face-opening.

And extra credit if you spotted the other flaw in the White House defense. The U.S. was asking Russia to discuss this big secret thing…and also concerned that Russia would find out that the U.S. knew about it? If my math is right, the Russians realized the U.S. knew about it roughly three nanoseconds after the U.S. asked to discuss it.

Campaign Watch

MONEY The Trump campaign is apparently following the Trump Organization’s lead when it comes to money and the not-having thereof. Just days after D4FRFP Donald Trump was ordered to turn out his pockets and turn over the fake money he pretends to have, new campaign filings show his campaign is one step ahead of his business when it comes to his Trumpoverishment.

The Daily Beast reports that Trump’s fundraising is now lagging behind that of former Gov. Nikki Haley (R-SC). That’s right, for the first time in his life, Trump’s behind a woman for reasons unrelated to sexual predation.

Across the board, his political action committees (PACs) are raising less in donations than Haley is. At the same time, however, they’re disbursing massive amounts of schadenfreude.

Last month, Trump’s Save America PAC spent $3.9 million while only getting $8,508 in donations. That’s the brunch bill at Mar-a-Lago!

The Trump campaign itself spent about $11.5 million, while taking in donations totaling only $8.8 million. That’s the brunch bill at Mar-a-Lago for blind people!

Haley, meanwhile, took in more than Trump for the first time ever: $11.5 million. Which, of course, means she’ll have more money on hand when she inevitably drops out of the race and leaves her campaign cash for him in a paper bag beneath a bench at the zoo.

Two Quickies

• Twenty-three percent of New York City residents were officially poor in 2022 after the end of pandemic-era relief programs, including the expanded child tax credit. Those poor residents included 25% of the city’s kids, whom we ostensibly love. Overall, 500,000 people fell into poverty in 2022, the largest increase in poverty in more than a decade. On the bright side, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) is gonna be just fine.

• Pres. Joe Biden’s brother James is scheduled to testify behind closed doors tomorrow to the House Oversight and Judiciary committees. James Biden is expected to reveal specific details of how his brother at no point did the shit that the FBI’s informant now admits he didn’t do.

TCB

CORRECTION In yesterday’s TFN I said that Last Week Tonight host John Oliver asked right-wing Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to retire in exchange for one million dollars a year for the rest of his life in addition to what I described as “a $2.4 million.” I meant to write “a $2.4 million motorcoach.” But didn’t. I’m sorry. I erred. It will never happen again. 

CONFESSION Yesterday I mentioned that I might raise the annual pricing for a TFN subscription, and almost immediately someone paid for an annual subscription and I immediately felt disgusting and came down with self-cooties. My dream is to make TFN big enough, and betterer enough that it’s shared enough to grow organically. But NOT FOREVER. The quest for endless growth is killing us, so I’d like not to contribute to that. But there is a point at which I’ll be able to make a living doing this and can spend much more time on original reporting and digging into the enemies of democracy, especially ones that the democracy party isn’t too focused on at the moment. So, if you’re thinking my rapacity is boundless and the nagging and nudging will never end, I swear it will. If only to rid me of these meddlesome cooties…

CONSIDERATION In today’s fast-paced world of combustion-powered motor cars and electronic facsimile machines, I’ve been wondering whether TFN just isn’t keeping up. Meaning: When there’s big, breaking news, and assuming I’m not otherwise occupied — like, say, looking for a job! — if I’m able to research and write it up then…would you want that in your inbox right away? Or is TFN more of a morning ritual? Or something in between? Or all of the above? Lemme know what you think, and I will, too.

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Go get ‘em, kids…!

1. D4FRFP = Disgraced, quadicted, fraudster, rapist, former President.