Monday, January 20, 2020

Online "journalism" at work

The fact that Lev Parnas, Rudy Giuliani and Devin Nunes were in fairly constant contact with each other is galling but hardly shocking (nothing surprises me about the Ukraine situation any more, really), but this following tidbit about former The Hill staffer John Solomon is especially interesting:
The call records also show Giuliani, Nunes and Parnas also were in frequent contact with John Solomon, a former columnist for the Washington news outlet The Hill. Solomon published a series of opinion pieces criticizing former U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch as part of “a coordinated effort by associates of President Trump to push … false narratives publicly” in a bid to force Yovanovitch’s ouster, the Democratic report said, citing public statements, phone records, and contractual agreements.
After Solomon published an article critical of Yovanovitch on April 7, phone records show numerous calls between Giuliani, Parnas, Nunes and Solomon. For instance, on April 10, Giuliani and Nunes talked on three short calls in rapid succession, followed by a text message, and ending with a nearly 3-minute call. Later that day, Parnas and Solomon had a 4-minute, 39-second call.
The Hill had previously attempted some cleanup on Twitter and elsewhere after the mess Solomon caused, but if all of this comes off as "too little, too late", that's because it probably was.

Friday, January 3, 2020

Nothing good can come from this

It's not as if Qasem Soleimani wasn't a son of a bitch - he was, but a very high-ranking son of a bitch, to say the least - but his death on the business end of a US airstrike (and on neighboring Iraqi territory, on top of it) will do nothing to stabilize a region already fraught with sectarian violence and wall-to-wall atrocities against civilians.
But it couldn't possibly be a wag the dog hedge against certain domestic political issues, especially when embarrassing new evidence was about to come to light, could it?
Nah. Of course not.

Newspaper of (W)rec(k)ord

 If you're a member of a conrunning organization, you know you're in serious trouble when the  Guardian  -  an internationally known...