REALITYCHEX.COM - Constant Comments - The Machinations of the "War Room" Disinformation Campaign

The Ledes

Monday, June 30, 2025

It's summer in our hemisphere, and people across Guns America have nothing to do but shoot other people.

New York Times: “A gunman deliberately started a wildfire in a rugged mountain area of Idaho and then shot at the firefighters who responded, killing two and injuring another on Sunday afternoon in what the local sheriff described as a 'total ambush.' Law enforcement officers exchanged fire with the gunman while the wildfire burned, and officials later found the body of the male suspect on the mountain with a firearm nearby, Sheriff Robert Norris of Kootenai County said at a news conference on Sunday night. The authorities said they believed the suspect had acted alone but did not release any information about his identity or motives.” A KHQ-TV (Spokane) report is here.

New York Times: “The New York City police were investigating a shooting in Manhattan on Sunday night that left two people injured steps from the Stonewall Inn, an icon of the L.G.B.T.Q. rights movement. The shooting occurred outside a nearby building in Greenwich Village at 10:15 p.m., Sgt. Matthew Forsythe of the New York Police Department said. The New York City Pride March had been held in Manhattan earlier on Sunday, and Mayor Eric Adams said on social media that the shooting happened as Pride celebrations were ending. One victim who was shot in the head was in critical condition on Monday morning, a spokeswoman for the Police Department said. A second victim was in stable condition after being shot in the leg, she said. No suspect had been identified. The police said it was unclear if the shooting was connected to the Pride march.”

New York Times: “A dangerous heat wave is gripping large swaths of Europe, driving temperatures far above seasonal norms and prompting widespread health and fire alerts. The extreme heat is forecast to persist into next week, with minimal relief expected overnight. France, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece are among the nations experiencing the most severe conditions, as meteorologists warn that Europe can expect more and hotter heat waves in the future because of climate change.”

The Wires

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To keep the Conversation going, please help me by linking news articles, opinion pieces and other political content in today's Comments section.

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New York Times: “The New York Times Company has agreed to license its editorial content to Amazon for use in the tech giant’s artificial intelligence platforms, the company said on Thursday. The multiyear agreement 'will bring Times editorial content to a variety of Amazon customer experiences,' the news organization said in a statement. Besides news articles, the agreement encompasses material from NYT Cooking, The Times’s food and recipe site, and The Athletic, which focuses on sports. This is The Times’s first licensing arrangement with a focus on generative A.I. technology. In 2023, The Times sued OpenAI and its partner, Microsoft, for copyright infringement, accusing the tech companies of using millions of articles published by The Times to train automated chatbots without any kind of compensation. OpenAI and Microsoft have rejected those accusations.” ~~~

~~~ Marie: I have no idea what this means for "the Amazon customer experience." Does it mean that if I don't have a NYT subscription but do have Amazon Prime I can read NYT content? And where, exactly, would I find that content? I don't know. I don't know.

Washington Post reporters asked three AI image generators what a beautiful woman looks like. "The Post found that they steer users toward a startlingly narrow vision of attractiveness. Prompted to show a 'beautiful woman,' all three tools generated thin women, without exception.... Her body looks like Barbie — slim hips, impossible waist, round breasts.... Just 2 percent of the images showed visible signs of aging. More than a third of the images had medium skin tones. But only nine percent had dark skin tones. Asked to show 'normal women,' the tools produced images that remained overwhelmingly thin.... However bias originates, The Post’s analysis found that popular image tools struggle to render realistic images of women outside the Western ideal." ~~~

~~~ Marie: The reporters seem to think they are calling out the AI programs for being unrealistic. But there's a lot about the "beautiful women" images they miss. I find these omissions remarkably sexist. For one thing, the reporters seem to think AI is a magical "thing" that self-generates. It isn't. It's programmed. It's programmed by boys, many of them incels who have little or no experience or insights beyond comic books and Internet porn of how to gauge female "beauty." As a result, the AI-generated women look like cartoons; that is, a lot like an air-brushed photo of Kristi Noem: globs of every kind of dark eye makeup, Scandinavian nose, Botox lips, slathered-on skin concealer/toner/etc. makeup, long dark hair and the aforementioned impossible Barbie body shape, including huge, round plastic breasts.

New York Times: “George Clooney’s Broadway debut, 'Good Night, and Good Luck,' has been one of the sensations of the 2024-25 theater season, breaking box office records and drawing packed houses of audiences eager to see the popular movie star in a timely drama about the importance of an independent press. Now the play will become much more widely available: CNN is planning a live broadcast of the penultimate performance, on June 7 at 7 p.m. Eastern. The performance will be preceded and followed by coverage of, and discussion about, the show and the state of journalism.”

No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land. -- Magna Carta ~~~

~~~ New York Times: “Bought for $27.50 after World War II, the faint, water stained manuscript in the library of Harvard Law School had attracted relatively little attention since it arrived there in 1946. That is about to change. Two British academics, one of whom happened on the manuscript by chance, have discovered that it is an original 1300 version — not a copy, as long thought — of Magna Carta, the medieval document that helped establish some of the world’s most cherished liberties. It is one of just seven such documents from that date still in existence.... A 710-year-old version of Magna Carta was sold in 2007 for $21.3 million.... First issued in 1215, it put into writing a set of concessions won by rebellious barons from a recalcitrant King John of England — or Bad King John, as he became known in folklore. He later revoked the charter, but his son, Henry III, issued amended versions, the last one in 1225, and Henry’s son, Edward I, in turn confirmed the 1225 version in 1297 and again in 1300.”

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Tuesday

May302017

The Machinations of the "War Room" Disinformation Campaign

This video with Joy Reid is a perfect example of Bannon's Putinesque disinformation campaign that was so hyped upon Trump's return from dancing with autocrats and sowing distrust with our allies. Trump's "War Room" to push back against the Russian probe was widely reported four days ago. Since then, we're seeing signs of its awakening. It offers a perfect, real-time study in the Art of Deception by some of the slyest artisans in the business.

The disinformation pipeline is clear: Dig up dirt in the corners of the internet, spread the filth among the bottom feeders, then use its rising "popularity" as proof it deserves attention by the MSM. Here, it's the Wall Street Journal's columnist and Trump propagandist Kimberely Strassel who tries to smokebomb viewers' thoughts re: Kushner by hyping an obscure Breitbart (Bannon) article claiming alleged false equivalencies from the Obama administration (thanks, Obama!).

Here, Joy Reid and the other guests push back on the disinformation and try to set the conversation back on track. But the Trumpers and GOP loyalists settling in to Fox & Friends are getting 5 Kimberely Strassels all chumming the waters with actual fake news. Since the administration can't be honest and claim the damaging stories are factually false, their master strategy is blatantly lie, obfuscate, and cry "Fake News" until the news cycle (hopefully) moves on....

...Trumpist Twitter Bots Awaken. Travis Gettys of RawStory: "A two-year-old report on 'Obama's secret outreach to Russia' hit the top spot on the conservative Drudge Report after hundreds of bot accounts flooded Twitter with links to the article.... The original Bloomberg report largely disappeared from Twitter after interest died down a few weeks after its publication, but it began recirculating over the weekend. Two posts appeared to have been shared directly from the Bloomberg site early Saturday morning and Sunday evening, but then a deluge of posts using the same phrasing and tags burst forth starting at 12:48 a.m. and continuing every two or three minutes for the next 11 hours. Many of those accounts, at least in the early hours of the social media push, display the distinctive traits of bots -- with highly unbalanced posting-to-followers ratios, inscrutable account names, few public interactions and almost no original content phrasing." --safari (Also linked yesterday)...

...The initial revealings of the War Room's "Alternative Facts" campaign bring to mind the Steve. M. post linked earlier by Marie about Steve Bannon's supposed "messaging savviness": "Bannon might not actually change what most Americans are talking about. What he's skilled at doing is changing what right-wingers are talking about. And maybe that's worth it to Trump, because he seems to believe he can save his presidency as long as 80+ percent of Republicans still support him without question."...

...Trump's administration and the GOP in general have moved so far right (just look at all the legislation they're proposing) that they seem incapable of messaging to the center or 'independents', let alone the scary lefty communists. Democrats don't even merit conversation (again, look at Congress). So the question remains: Can this obfuscation campaign endure for years on end, only messaging to the Loyalists who hold the keys to their reelection? Bannon, et al. are one trick ponies. Seems like we're going to find out. --safari

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Regarding the Fake News onslaught from the Trump WH, it seems Trump has no other choice than to scream that every new revelation of wrongdoing and criminality on the part of himself and his cronies/family members/apparatchiks is a lie. For a while he was screeching about leaks but that made it sound like whatever was oozing out from under his desk was true and he was now engaged in hanging the leaker out to dry. But tacit admissions of guilt aren't the best way to run a counterintelligence campaign, thus the bellowing about fake news.

Since Trump is the source of so much fake news, it really is counter intelligence, or, rather, contra intelligence.

May 30, 2017 |

Akhilleus

Regarding the Begley, "Stat" piece on Drumpf's linguistic deterioration: you pointed out the characteristics of dementia he expressed before the election, to no avail; now we have him and imo the line of succession is equally, if not more, fraught with danger. The only way out I envision is Mueller's investigation causing such turmoil that any substantive actions are virtually impossible until at least the 2018 elections. My sense is that Drumpf's executive orders will be mired in the courts; damage will be done for sure, but if the Democrats get their act together and begin representing their entire constituency there is still hope. owen

May 30, 2017 |

Owen Cox

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