treasured8elief posted:

https://twitter.com/SenTinaSmith/status/961005166450311169

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

???

Condiv posted:

tbh, i'm kinda surprised how spineless the dems are being wrt dreamers.for all their banging on about caring about immigrants and immigration, when the rubber met the road they've abandoned them totally

Chomskyan posted:

https://twitter.com/theintercept/status/966736907404283906

Aves Maria! posted:

seems we've finally disrupted currency by reinventing company scrip

Javes posted:

https://twitter.com/banditelli/status/972123325659889664

Please no more prosecutor politicians.

punk rebel ecks posted:

DaveWoo posted:

https://twitter.com/darrensands/status/982032928103378944

Raskolnikov38 posted:

can’t wait to hear about how Bush the elder is good now

Groovelord Neato posted:

the gently caress is this.

Why America will regret legalizing marijuana

http://theweek.com/articles/769168/why-america-regret-legalizing-marijuana

Majorian posted:

Robert Novak Journalism Fellow.

kidkissinger posted:

Same writer:

http://theweek.com/articles/752954/some-women-dont-want-reproductive-rights-im

Ardennes posted:

Of course, the even bigger irony of destroying the US manufacturing base was to essentially turn China in a superpower that in all likelihood will eventually surpass the US in the not too far future.

We really showed those Russkis.

The Kingfish posted:

Why is the prince dressed up like a space fascist?

treasured8elief posted:

Groovelord Neato posted:

i just don't get how the dems didn't learn anything from the past i dunno three decades.

readingatwork posted:

Good news everyone! We finally got all the moderate Republicans so now we have a party of business-friendly conservatives and a party of literal Nazis. Great work people! The republic has been saved!

WhiskeyJuvenile posted:

https://twitter.com/jjmacnab/status/1004044860146372608

thread

quote:

Right-wing media goes wild for dubious Tucson 'sex trafficking camp'

Some of the biggest outlets and personalities in right-wing media are going wild over what they claim is the discovery of an Arizona child sex trafficking camp linked to Hillary Clinton and a Mexican cement company.

The supposed sex trafficking camp has attracted attention across the right-wing internet, from InfoWars, Gateway Pundit and Big League Politics to personalities like Mike Cernovich and Laura Loomer, to 4Chan, Gab and Reddit conspiracy threads.

A video showing the supposed child sex prison has garnered more than 600,000 views, with other videos of the camp spreading on Instagram and Facebook.

Their case, though, is not exactly air-tight!



The growing hubbub over the Tucson-area encampment — which appears to actually just be an encampment for the homeless — illustrates a lot of the trends going on in right-wing media. This story has it all: fame-hungry livestreamers, militia-style stand-offs, global pedophile networks, anti-Semitic conspiracies, and — as always — the Clintons.

The saga over the homeless encampment, which has been dubbed "Operation Backyard Brawl" by the would-be citizen journalists agitating over it, began last Tuesday in a wooded area near a disused cement plant in Tucson.

Members of Veterans on Patrol, an Arizona veterans group, discovered the camp while looking for homeless veterans to aid. They soon became convinced that the camp was actually a way-station on a child sex trafficking route.

The case was accelerated by credulous news reports from local TV stations and a Patch site, all of which quoted with little skepticism the idea that the veterans' group had discovered a sex trafficking site.

Was it just a homeless camp — or was it a sex trafficking bunker? According to the framing of the local news reports, there was no way of knowing for sure.


"Is this a homeless camp or is it a camp that was trafficking children? We don't know," said one local NBC reporter.

While it's impossible to say for sure what happened at the camp, the evidence in favor of the sex trafficking claim was awfully flimsy. The "proof" included some children's toys in the camp, a crawl space they claimed that only a child could fit in, and a box of hair dye.

Some straps on a tree in the camp, they said, was clear evidence that it was a "rape tree."


Even the local TV reporters couldn't drum up much enthusiasm for the secret sex prison claim. One reporter struggled to find much evidence, instead just listing innocuous items like they were ominous:

This camp has a mirror, and right behind it is this table. And on the table, you can see shaving cream, flea and tick shampoo, roach and ant killer. And right behind it, this area, where people probably slept.
Not exactly convincing stuff.

Even the straps on the "rape tree" didn't hold up as evidence — one reporter pointed out that other straps on trees in the camp were used to hold up the makeshift homeless encampment. As for the supposed child prison crawl space, it becomes less sinister when considered as a shelter from the Arizona heat.

Interestingly, Veterans on Patrol is no stranger to conservative media cause celebres.


Veterans on Patrol leader Lewis Arthur, who is not himself a veteran, attended both the Bundy Ranch and Malheur wildlife refuge stand-offs. A former drug dealer, Arthur has reinvented himself as an activist for veterans by operating a camp of his own for the homeless — albeit one that has earned grim reviews from the Tucson area-homeless, and regularly gets him in trouble with the law.

The Tucson police weren't impressed by the evidence of the sex trafficking. In a statement provided to Right Richter, the police department described the site as a "one-time homeless encampment."

"There is no evidence that this camp is being used for any type of criminal activity, including human trafficking," the statement reads.

Instead of a human trafficking scandal, then, the Arizona case starts to look like a bunch of fired-up people finding a pile of trash in the desert and spinning theories about it.

But what should have been only an oddball local story has now earned nationwide attention on social media, because it fits neatly into some of the more outre obsessions of right-wing media.

The Veterans on Patrol and their supporters — kept in the loop via near-constant livestreaming on Facebook — took the police's dismissal of their evidence as proof that a far more serious cover-up was afoot.

The group occupied the cement plant, hanging a banner aimed at smugglers and an upside-down U.S. flag as a distress signal, and saying they wouldn't leave until police searched the area with a cadaver dog.

One Reddit user following the case approvingly dubbed the stand-off "Ruby Ridge but with social media."


The Veterans on Patrol were soon joined at the site by Craig Sawyer, a media-hungry former Navy SEAL who goes by the evocative nickname "Sawman."


Sawyer, a regular guest on InfoWars who has tweeted positively about the Pizzagate, Seth Rich and QAnon conspiracy theories, was quick to dive into the hole in the ground and start filming himself. Sawyer, who has previously claimed that the Muslim Brotherhood and DNC are trying to disrupt his anti-pedophile efforts, claimed the straps on the trees represented "a small grove of rape trees."

Sawyer's appearance boosted the social media profile of the scene, with increasing Still, The Veterans on Patrol eventually surrendered the cement plant to police after a cadaver search was conducted and turned up no results — police called claims that a body was buried nearby "unsubstantiated."

But on Monday afternoon, the Veterans on Patrol were still calling for people to come meet them to search more homeless camps in the Tucson area for proof of human trafficking. Arthur said he'd keep up the searches until "Craig 'the Sawman' Sawyer tells me this isn't related to human trafficking."

Various right-wing personalities, including Cernovich, Loomer and Jack Posobiec, seized on the discovery of the supposed sex trafficking camp:



The conspiracy was fueled further because the disused concrete plant is owned by Cemex, a Mexican construction materials giant. As a multinational corporation worth tens of billions of dollars, Cemex proved a rich target for sleuths looking for any connections that could be folded into already existing conspiracy theories.

The "evidence" that was something more nefarious going on at the camp than some homeless people living in the woods includes a years-old Cemex contribution to the Clinton Foundation, and the fact that Cemex received a rebuilding contract in Haiti — where the Clinton Global Initiative also worked!



After the police denial, some elements of right-wing media distanced themselves from the story — InfoWars has already deleted their post about about the camp.

Still, it seems likely that a good number of people who see social media videos of the "sex camp" will come away convinced that the Veterans on Patrol really had uncovered a part of some sordid conspiracy.

Watching the myriad videos shot at the camp, it's hard not to feel like the various figures who visited it are ignoring the much more likely tragedy.

The evidence points to a crib and dolls being at the homeless encampment not because it was a site for child sex trafficking, but because there were homeless children there.

But, unlike the idea of police covering up a Clinton sex trafficking ring, that's not the kind of story that goes viral.

galenanorth posted:

The budget crises of 2011 and onward did not have to happen if Democrats had repealed the debt ceiling while they had the chance, but I guess they need to think long-term when coming up with excuses to capitulate over the next decade.

Radish posted:

The Democrats are absolutely not prepared for the anger that the country is feeling. They are going to get elected and think they can pull a 2008 again but people will be furious and want justice. Obama got away with it but people aren't going to forget his leniency was returned with pure malice. The fact they decided to chide people yesterday shows they have literally no idea what is going on. Even if they want to play the controlled opposition the fact they didnt just keep their mouths shut is mind boggling.

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

I thought Wonkette was Anne Marie Cox

Lightning Knight posted:

Sounds like a future DSA recruit to me.

Crow Jane posted:

I feel like the nicest thing I've ever heard anyone say about Hogan is "well, he hates Trump, he's not one of those Republicans". Which, though it may be true, still isn't much of an accomplishment.

Lightning Knight posted:

https://twitter.com/mattbinder/status/1012807976288219137?s=21

Grouchio posted:

What are you betting on?