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If you're curious what Trump's defense will look like, all you have to do is turn on Fox News. My latest at @mmfa

 The tl;dr is that for years right-wing media have been excusing Trump's violent rhetoric by going, "Yes, but THE DEMOCRATS..." and then bending themselves into knots to pretend that Dems were calling for violence when they very, very clearly weren't.
And in fact, this predates Trump.

In 2008, Obama was talking about not backing down in the face of an ugly campaign. He said "If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun."

https://t.co/i5YaQJsKop
That quote was from the movie The Untouchables. And there's no way anybody reading that quote in good faith could conclude that he was talking about actual guns and knives. But it became a big talking point on the right.

https://t.co/vBb0gbaQkz
In 2018, Obama-era Attorney General Eric Holder was speaking to a group of Georgia Democrats about GOP voter suppression. He riffed on Michelle Obama's "When they go low, we go high" line from the 2016 DNC.
"Michelle always says, ‘When they go low, we go high.’ No. No. When they go low, we kick them. That’s what this new Democratic Party is about. We’re proud as hell to be Democrats. We’re willing to fight for the ideals of the Democratic Party," he said.
So as not to be misunderstood, Holder even said, “Now, when I say, you know, ‘we kick ‘em,’ I don’t mean we do anything inappropriate. We don’t do anything illegal."
But it didn't matter. It was obvious that he wasn't talking about actually kicking anyone. Fox News just ran with it. They edited out the context where he even explains that he was speaking figuratively. Then they pretended he was being extremely literal.

Seriously, watch this.
Trump called into Fox & Friends that day. He called Holder's comment "disgusting" and "dangerous." Then he went on to talk about how nice and peaceful his rallies were (seriously), and then brought up a conspiracy theory about George Soros paying protesters.
When I wrote about it at the time, I highlighted just how quickly the Holder story spread throughout right-wing media, and how much they all pretended that he was speaking literally. https://t.co/pzck9v1ncm
If they thought Holder was being literal when he said "No, when they go low, we kick them," did they think that Michelle Obama meant "when they literally duck down on the floor, we take flight?" No, of course not. They just feign ignorance.
Fox covered that story for about a week. Every once in a while, someone on the right will include Holder saying that in one of their "oooOoOoO, look at Democrats advocating for violence!" compilations, even though that's just flat-out false.
Another example of people on the right purposely taking words out of context to pretend that Democrats advocate violence: In January 2017, Tim Kaine talked about opposing the administration by fighting in Congress, in the courts, in the streets, online, and at the ballot box.
Naturally, right-wing outlets decided to run with that quote, making sure to highlight him saying "in the streets," so as to make it sound like he was talking about actual physical violence rather than, you know, marches. https://t.co/59mCecNKXr
In 2018, there was this whole thing about "civility." A Virginia restaurant owner asked Sarah Sanders to leave because of her work in the Trump administration, and it set off a whole controversy.
That story made the rounds on right-wing and mainstream media, which unfortunately resulted in the restaurant owner becoming the target of a pro-Trump mob that would throw actual poop at her restaurant https://t.co/hgB8AHo4mb
(If you're unfamiliar with that story, here it is. https://t.co/y2P38s8Imr )
Days later, Maxine Waters was speaking to a group of people and basically encouraged them to do what that restaurant owner did should they see members of the Trump administration in public, pointing to the implemented family separation policy.
(What the restaurant owner did, what Waters encouraged, etc., that's something I think reasonable people can disagree on. However, it's clear that Waters wasn't calling for violence, and it's important to keep that separate. Still, that's a major right-wing example used.)
Dan Bongino went on Fox to clutch his pearls. https://t.co/eOYAyifvIU
Now, that's not at all to say that there isn't politically-motivated violence from people on the left. Hell, in 2017, a guy whose FB was filled with anti-Trump/anti-GOP content shot 5 people at a GOP baseball practice!

https://t.co/J0SKny65Xw
After that shooting, right-wing media jumped in to blame everyone from Snoop Dogg to Shakespeare for it. https://t.co/V33bnZWFeL
Another example from 2017 that right-wing media tried to turn into an example of "Democrats call for violence" was the mangling of Loretta Lynch urging people to keep pushing forward even if times were tough. https://t.co/7oHUP7YajS
Going into the 2018 midterms, the GOP and right-wing media coalesced around a message of "Jobs Not Mobs." The idea was that Democrats were violent while the GOP would never do such a thing. https://t.co/QN0jVexW1w
Fox even went so far as to pretend that a Proud Boys attack on protesters was "the mob" of the left attacking Republicans. Just the total polar opposite of reality. https://t.co/P9ir9lEUIs
The entire strategy going into those midterms was basically to try to scare their viewers into thinking that Democrats were trying to literally kill them. As @MattGertz wrote at the time: https://t.co/OHVVd2miGI
https://t.co/eKwsKWrre3
https://t.co/5mrqgvZVnU
That night, Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes volunteered the group to be "foot soldiers" for the Republican Party https://t.co/Pf94Bfy98W
It should also be noted that the "Jobs Not Mobs" video that started that whole slogan in October 2018 originated on the ultra-violent r/The_Donald reddit page (which has since moved to its own site) https://t.co/8n90WkphEN
But the whole thing is all part of a larger strategy of accusing Democrats of inciting violence by pointing to statements and actions that absolutely do not incite violence.
Right-wing blogger and crusades-enthusiast Ryan Saavedra tried to pretend that Biden called for a "physical revolution" in 2019 (he didn't; he called for finding common ground, explicitly saying that he wasn't calling for a revolution) https://t.co/QN35wlumPx
We all understand that simply using the word "fight" or "beat" or whatever... that's not necessarily a call for violence.

Anyone who says that "Well, Politician X said we have to fight for this bill clearly means physical violence!" is not a serious person.
And throughout Trump's entire time in office, that's been a common theme: pretending that the issue people have with something Trump said being a specific forbidden word being used rather than what he said in using it.
When Trump called a handful of places "shithole countries," the right-wing response was "Look, here's an example of someone else saying the word 'shit!'" which is very obviously not the problem people had with it. Same goes with the Access Hollywood tape.
It was good to see @RepCicilline explicitly lay this out during the first day of the trial. https://t.co/HUdWqtRyaj
In May 2020, ABC News was able to find 54 cases of people invoking Trump in connection to violence/treats/assaults https://t.co/UEeL0GUY6K
Last month, Vox catalogued all the times Trump encouraged political violence. https://t.co/pHP7JvXbDj
The only surprise about January 6 was that it took this long for his violent mob of supporters to try to overthrow the government.
He's been doing this the whole time, and he's been praised for it. Here's Fox & Friends excitedly tweeting about Trump's "strong message" in 2016 https://t.co/QWda6AGCWm
I try to cover that and more in my piece published today. It's what you're likely to hear in Trump's defense: https://t.co/HUdWqtRyaj

More from Parker Molloy

Parker Molloy
Parker Molloy
@ParkerMolloy
Anyone who is legally eligible to cast a ballot in an election should be allowed to do so in whatever way is most convenient for them. If that's in-person on election day, great; by mail, great; in-person in the weeks leading up to an election, great.

That is the only acceptable way for a democratic republic to function. Voting should be easy and it should be encouraged. There should be:

- Automatic voter registration.
- No excuses needed to vote absentee.

This is not controversial.

It's telling how people defend more restrictive voting methods. Look at this ridiculous quote from Pete Hegseth about how everyone being able to easily cast a ballot somehow stripping people of the "recourse" of the ballot box.
https://t.co/4AcTPT2HfD


They know there's not widespread fraud. It's not about "fraud." It never was.

They just want to put as many obstacles in the way as humanly possible, to make it more difficult for people to vote.

"We could've voted in person. I can go to Walmart. I can go to a store, I can go to a restaurant, I can go to sports games in some places. You tell me we couldn't have voted? I just don't buy it."

No one stopped you from voting in person, Pete!
LEGAL
Parker Molloy
Parker Molloy
@ParkerMolloy
This is trash, @AP. Utter garbage. Shame on the “journalists” who wrote this (really? You needed 2 people to report out this garbage?) Also, you don’t even make clear that this lady is wrong. You treat it as a legitimate position. What the fuck is wrong with you?


Look at this. This treats both views as legitimate. Fucking garbage.


Have you learned nothing?! This is such bullshit. Why the fuck do I even bother trying to push back on bad journalism? No one in positions of power ever listen.

I used to think that bad journalism was mostly the result of honest mistakes, but the past few years have really hammered home for me how much it is intentional trash. Shame on @AP for that bullshit. Shame on @ABC for letting Rand Paul rant about his election conspiracy theories.

Seriously, @AP @ClaireGalofaro @JulietLinderman? You didn’t even bother to note that this lady’s delusions are false.
JOURNALISM
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Parker Molloy
Parker Molloy
@ParkerMolloy
There are a number of reasons bills like these are wrongheaded. One is that it tries to implement the same kind of one-size-fits-all solution that opponents of trans inclusion claim to oppose.

But let’s get nuanced for a minute...


Do trans women and girls have an advantage in sports over other women and girls?

I’m here to provide a very unsatisfying answer: It depends.

What sport are we talking about?

How old are people competing in it?

What sort of hormone treatment has the person in question had and for how long?

Those are all factors that play into the fairness question.

Trying to implement broad policies in the name of ensuring fairness can actually have the opposite of the intended effect.

Take the case of Mack Beggs.

A few years back, Beggs was a high school student in Texas. He was a wrestler, and wanted to do it at the college level.

Beggs is a trans man, meaning his birth certificate said female on it. Like many trans guys, he takes testosterone as part of his medical transition.

He wanted to wrestle. Specifically, he wanted a spot on his school’s boys team.

He wasn’t allowed.
GOVERNMENT
Parker Molloy
Parker Molloy
@ParkerMolloy
This is a good piece by @AaronBlake. I've been scratching my head over claims that there was something in this trove of emails that implicated Fauci in something bad because pretty much everything matched up with what was being said publicly at whatever time the emails were from.


One thing that's occurred to me over the past few years is that there's a sense that the mere *existence* of emails is seen as evidence of wrongdoing, which is obviously nonsense.

It played out that way when it came to the DNC and Podesta emails in 2016, the Hunter Biden e-mails in 2020, these e-mails in 2021. It wasn't that there was much that was damning in, say, the DNC emails that helped sink Clinton's candidacy, but just their existence ...

... gave off a sense of corruption/scandal/etc., that weighed more heavily on people's perception of them as the result of them taking the form of a leak/data dump.

And it's kind of similar with the Fauci e-mails (which weren't leaked, but were FOIAed).

Anyway, again, @AaronBlake's post is a good and methodical breakdown of some of the bizarre claims being thrown about. If there's anything we didn't already know contained in those e-mails, I haven't seen it.
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Parker Molloy
Parker Molloy
@ParkerMolloy
My latest piece at @mmfa:

Fox News keeps trying to justify GOP efforts to object to the Electoral College vote by pointing to the number of people who think the election was stolen (after spending 2 months telling their audiences that it was

This is Fox, basically:

Another comparison to the role Fox is playing here via one of my favorite Onion articles:

Or maybe a human centipede, but with the front connected back to the end for a loop of shit-eating. Yeah, that's it. That's the role Fox is playing here.

But seriously, check out the *more than 2 months* of Fox-enabled conspiracy theories (a partial list):
NEWS

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\U0001f1fa\U0001f1f8I Support Our Military & Law Enforcement\U0001f1fa\U0001f1f8
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@TheWiseOwl_AZ
1. Ten Days of Darkness have begun – & would end Inauguration Day 20 Jan.

Since 6 Jan. Washington DC has been under lockdown. President Trump has mobilized the Military & they were collecting evidence of political elite conspiring with foreign nations to take over the
U.S.
GOVERNMENT , TRUMP
Larry Schweikart
Larry Schweikart
@LarrySchweikart
1) Where we are: This is much, much bigger than a fraudulent election (it was) or rampant gubment tyrannical China Virus abuse (it is).

2) What we are facing has been building for a good 30 years.

3) I date it back to the GOP failure to defeat Clinton in the gubment shutdown.

4) If you went to public school, that would be the 1995 budget battle.

5) The brand new GOP Congress, with plenty of public support, failed to rein in a Clinton bloated budget.

6) It wasn't the numbers. Compared to today's deficits & debts, this was pocket change. Rather, this was the first time since the Cold War, which was a legit excuse for constant deficit spending, that Congress failed to do its MAIN constitutional duty--oversee spending.

7) No, this isn't a thread about deficits or debt. At present, I don't think those pose the biggest challenge to us, or even probably one of the top five.

8) Rather, this is about a deadly disease that hit DC & the patient refused to take any medicine for it.

9) The disease was the failure to address the major problems of the day, whether it was deficits, Islamic terrorism, the banking crisis, or trade.

10) Vote fraud & this frankenstein of an election is only the latest SYMPTOM of this much larger disease.
POLITICS , GOVERNMENT
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George Webb - Investigative Journalist
George Webb - Investig...
@GeorgeW63613375
1. I am in the process of recovering four years of destroyed Twitter posts from my recent hack. Most related to an organization of rogue CIA agents doing election hacking, drug running, and dark weapons trading in a group led by AG Bill Barr. Other have call this the Enterprise.


2. The Enterprise is run Bill Barr himself and organized 800 ex-CIA agents and 300 ex-Soviet KGB Generals into a junta of 1,100 Frank Guistra partners in a sort of law firm of international crime. Iran Contra drug running was the first major operation in 1980. by the Enterprise.


3. Chip Tatum, a CIA pilot, flew Bill Barr, then a CIA attorney for George Bush, to Central America for Iran Contra banking and money laundering operations talks about this extensively in him book about his close friend, Robert Mueller, entitled, "The Mule".


4. A fundamental premise of my work over the last four years is to focus on this core Iran Contra, "Enterprise" group, to follow election hacking, dark weapons trade, drug running, and money laundering. Here are some video notes capture on the web from shows I did in 2016.


5. You can see in these 2016 show notes how my focus was on a USAID funded Serbian election flipping, subversive group called OTPOR. This group received subversion funds for election flipping through KKR, a joint venture of David Petraeus and Henry Kissinger.
GOVERNMENT
Miftah Ismail
Miftah Ismail
@MiftahIsmail
Last month PTI government raised base power tariffs by Rs 1.95 per unit. This month NEPRA has determined tariff increases of Rs 1.53 per unit in Fuel Adjustment Charges for December and Rs 0.83 in Quarterly Adjustment for 4th quarter of 2020. 1/17

So your electric bills for February maybe higher by Rs 4.31 per unit. That’s a Tabdeeli we will feel in our monthly budgets.

The PTI govt takes no responsibility for anything and just blames PMLN’s previous govt. 2/17

For instance when the entire country suffered a blackout a minister blamed PMLN. But when asked exactly what happened he said he didn’t know. He just “knew” it was PMLN’s fault. Later it turned out that Einsteins in PTI forgot to carry out routine maintenance last summer.
3/17

So PTI blames increase in basic tariff (Rs 1.95 of Rs 4.31) on PMLN saying that this is due to higher fixed costs incurred as a result of PMLN setting up more power plants. But that is crazy. The higher fixed cost should now divided by an even higher number of units whose 4/17

generating capacity PMLN installed. And the total cost of all PMLN plants is lower than all previously set up plants. Of course we had to set up power plants. In 2013 we had 12 to 18 hours of load shedding in most of Pakistan. 5/17
GOVERNMENT
Michael Pettis
Michael Pettis
@michaelxpettis
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While debt-to-GDP ratios already have a limited but very misunderstood use, it seems economists are finding bright new ways of misunderstanding them. Now we say that when nominal interest rates are lower than nominal growth rates, the

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downward pressure on the debt-to-GDP ratio makes rising government debt and larger government deficits more sustainable and more easily justified.

This is totally confused. When the nominal interest rate is lower than the nominal GDP growth rate, it only means that net...

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borrowers are getting a disproportionate share of growth relative to net lenders. This in and of itself changes the comparability of the debt-to-GDP ratio, so the fact that the ratio may decline tells us nothing about its sustainability which, I'm glad to say, isn't...

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a mistake Olivier Blanchard makes in this article.

At least three things matter. First, whether or not rising debt is sustainable depends almost wholly on underlying conditions in the real economy, and only trivially on the arithmetical relationship between...

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the interest rate and the growth rate. Second, this approach simply assumes away financial distress costs, in which case debt capacity is infinite anyway and the interest rate becomes irrelevant. And third, it assumes that the nominal debt level matters independently...
GOVERNMENT

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Shy people are either overthinking or highly observant of the social setting.

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'So what do I do?'

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1. We were informed that Tier 4B (us, the Internet Group) would receive 800# notification on Wed. 16 Dec. (A Shotgun Release of liquidity started on Mon. 14 Dec.).

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Shri Hanuman had boon to be immortal. And be present where ever there is Ram stuti.
I came across this beautiful story that I would like to share
#threadstories
#Hanuman ji is believed to live in the foothills of Himalayas. But once he spent a lot of time in Sri Lanka
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Where Ravan's brother ruled for many years..
On his way back he came across tribal people from community called #Mathanga
He gave Darshan to them. The chief of the tribe asked him to keep coming back to guide their generations
Hanuman ji said that whoever recites this mantra
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I will give them Darshan. But there are two conditions
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He promised to come after every 41 yrs
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The Mathangs also maintain a ‘logbook’ where they record all the words spoken and ‘leelas’ performed by Lord Hanuman.
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programmes for Hanuman devotees who can do ‘Sadhna‘ under the guidance of Setuu masters. Devotees who qualify all the criteria will be eligible for Hanuman’s ‘sakshaat darshan‘
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Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel was previously CEO of bioMerieux in France from 07-10.

Alain Merieux, who owns bioMerieux, was instrumental in the creation of the Wuhan Institute of Virology P4 Lab.

The same people who helped create the virus, also helped to create the vaccines...


Moderna partnered with French Pasteur Institute in 2015 to develop mRNA vaccine technology.

Pasteur Institute partnered with the Wuhan P4 Laboratory in 2017 along with the Merieux Foundation to study emerging viruses...
https://t.co/yFsHwrNYaK
https://t.co/9M5lydBKhM


Nobel prize winning scientist Luc Montagnier asserts that Sars-Cov-2 is man-made and originated from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Montagnier did extensive work with the Pasteur Institute in France which was partnered with the Wuhan P4.

Merieux Foundation & the Chinese government have worked together since 1965, and partnered to study emerging pathogens in Africa in 2015.

Their research included "PATHOGENS CARRIED BY BATS" that provoke respiratory diseases.

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