It was already out of the greys. The damage was done. At that point I believe expressing contempt and hoping it reaches some tiny fraction of their brain is better than ignoring them. That’s just me personally. 

Ah okay, like I said I’ve gotten it on Twitter and my MENA heavy feed naturally picked that up, but without much detail. I half expect at least one is from Rudaw given their English content, but who knows. 

I’m still laughing over “Mr. Kurd”. I want to know what outlet he represented. Actually asked a useful question, not that he got an answer. 

I said this on Twitter (where I’ve been catching the highlights);

Who let this worthless troll out of the greys? 

Unfortunately one more need to know; this is all a farce.

Eh, very different game. Hardcore partisans called Ryan a wonk, most people I know who are “wonkish” never did. He can play one on TV, but his numbers always relied on partisan fantasy.

Yeah, but that’s the case for a lot of people in who have the “partisan wonk” background. I don’t think Nielsen is unique in that, which was my point. Also compared to some of the worst charlatans in those fields with ties to Republicans she came off as at least palatable. I watch all the supposed “terrorism experts”…

They were reliable. Clinton won the popular vote, by a bit less than most polls had predicted but not by terribly much. For a national poll a few percentage points either way is just the margin of error. The whole idea that the “polls were all wrong” is bullshit you got from some garbage right wing blog. Internet…

It doesn’t matter because that’s not true. Even with less than ideal metrics like polling the trendlines are clear enough. 

One of the weird parts about this; until recently Nielsen was largely seen as one of the more competent and non-partisan actors in the administration. She had a pretty generic “Republican policy wonk” background. But the Trump administration has completely destroyed her, and she can’t claim it was all outside her…

Ah hell, no it was the right person but I thought there was a “yeah” at the beginning signifying I was agreeing with an expanding on your comment. For all I know I imagined typing it, but I meant it to be there. My bad. Long day.

I think “don’t vote for a far-right reactionary for a lifetime appointment” is a pretty reasonable line, hardly a purity test. Gorsuch claimed to be a moderate and is far-right. They don’t even have the excuse of falling for that again. Kavanaugh is nakedly partisan in a way even Gorsuch wasn’t. 

He’s been caught exaggerating a few times. Not caught in a lie is true, but he’s been walking right up to the line. Given the situation, that’s a dangerous habit. It’s not like the bad-faith hordes of right-wing commentators need a good reason to discredit you to the public, they’ll take any half-assed reason they…

Not that you need to be Nostradamus to predict it, but they’re already talking about a vote this week. Meaning Thursday after the hearing or Friday, a day after. No time to do due diligence. 

Avenatti is an ambitious grandstander and I don’t trust him one bit. I hope he’s not overselling this, because if he is he’ll fuel the far-right post-fact garbage. No one should ever forgive him if he lets his ego get in the way of justice for victims. 

Online prepper communities go from practical (people who like the idea of growing more food locally, emergency water filters, etc) to the conspiratorial. The former I pretty solidly enjoy and would love to undertake someday. It can be simple stuff, landscape with more perennials and with ones that have food value.…

Yes, but most reporting about polls isn’t. The people who know how to accurately deal with the results and try and balance out various methodological flaws and sampling issues aren’t the ones who present the polls to the public most of the time.

I think a lot of them are one person, to be honest. Way too many identical comments under different accounts using nearly identical word-choice and speech patterns. 

That’s more of a magazine article, not really any academic heft there, and we’re not far enough in to track long term effects. I might just ignore Trump entirely and stick with policy recommendations for US policy in Central Asia.