House Intel votes to release FISA memo...

[Mountain Man]

:

Speaking of lies... Nunes never criticized the size of the font. That appears to be an invention of New York Magazine. What he actually said, according to your source:

"A footnote saying something may be political is a far cry from letting the American people know that the Democrats and the Hillary campaign paid for dirt that the FBI then used to get a warrant on an American citizen to spy on another campaign."

He makes a good point, and it's consistent with the revelations in the memo. As I've pointed out elsewhere, there is a big, big difference between saying that "the research was being paid for by a political entity" and disclosing that it was, in fact, uncorroborated rumors from a source that was strongly biased against Trump and paid for by Hillary and the Democrats.

[Sparko]

You can be assured that my refusal had nothing whatsoever to do with the pay, you conscienceless propagandist.

I get a pound of bacon per clickthru.

[Mountain Man]

Don't worry I took the job.

Hey guys, did you know that Brietbart says that New Zealander's PM thinks Kiwis are a bunch of lazy drug addicts?

Oh and not to leave out Tassy...

White Australians will be extinct within 40 years because Australian men are too busy smoking, drinking beer and taking drugs to procreate, a Muslim businessman has warned.

Dude, don't tell people! It's supposed to look "grassroots"!

[Sparko]

Dude, don't tell people! It's supposed to look "grassroots"!

mum's the word.

[rogue06]

Don't worry I took the job.

Hey guys, did you know that Brietbart says that New Zealander's PM thinks Kiwis are a bunch of lazy drug addicts?

Points for starting your sentence with "hey" which a recent study found that people are more likely to click a link that starts with that word.

[Starlight]

It's called the Patriot Post.

I saw it yesterday along with Breitbart in a list of 'fake news' sites produced by an Oxford university study.

Reading the methodology of the study though, I think it's a bit misleading to call them 'fake news' sites. I would call them 'unreliable/hyper-partisan/super-opinionated' sites. Their list include Alex Jones, Breitbart, Patriot Post, Hannity, Daily Caller, etc.

[Starlight]

Hey guys, did you know that Brietbart says that New Zealander's PM thinks Kiwis are a bunch of lazy drug addicts?

If Breitbart says it, or if that lying right-wing scumbag ex-PM said it, it must be true.

Interesting difference between him and Trump... Trump claimed it was the immigrants who were the bad people (the Mexicans were rapists, carrying drugs etc) and Trump's own population needed saving from them, where John Key claimed it was his own population who were bad people and the immigrants who would save them. Two lying right-wing scumbag leaders, two very different views on immigration.

[Mountain Man]

From the "Now isn't that ironic" department, it turns out that in 2017, ardent memo critic and ranking member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Adam Schiff eagerly participated in a prank call from two Russian comedians posing as Ukrainian leaders ready to dish the dirt on Trump. At the time, he described the phone call as "productive" and was making arrangements to receive photographs and other comprising evidence from the pranksters, but now that the phone call has been made public, he's unconvincingly insisting that he knew it was prank call all along -- because you always tell your staff through internal communications that a prank call was "productive".

http://www.breitbart.com/big-governm...-donald-trump/

[One Bad Pig]

I saw it yesterday along with Breitbart in a list of 'fake news' sites produced by an Oxford university study.

Reading the methodology of the study though, I think it's a bit misleading to call them 'fake news' sites. I would call them 'unreliable/hyper-partisan/super-opinionated' sites. Their list include Alex Jones, Breitbart, Patriot Post, Hannity, Daily Caller, etc.

Reading the methodology of the study, I come to the conclusion that their description of such sites is hyper-partisan. There is zero rationale for why any particular site is included in their hit list; they merely describe them collectively in highly disparaging terms. That they lump anyone who identifies as a patriot as "hard conservative" tells me all I need to know about where they're coming from. This study wasn't worth the electrons it disturbed. It validates your POV, however, so I can see why you like it.

[Tassman]

That fact that it keeps you guys tied up in these hysterical little knots is all the motivation I need to continue linking to Breitbart.

That pretty well sums up your concern for actual facts. Pathetic!

[Tassman]

How did you refute what I said? The DNC paid Fusion to hire Steele to dig up dirt on Trump. His source was the Russians who everyone says tampered with the election. He then turns the Russian-sourced documents to the FBI who used Russian-sourced information to get a FISA warrant.

Nonsense! It was Papadopoulos, not the dossier which sparked the Russia investigation. In December 2017, intelligence officials revealed that the actual impetus was a series of comments made in May 2016 by Trump campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos during a drunken conversation to a top Australian diplomat in Britain. Papadopoulos revealed that he had inside information by bragging that the Kremlin had "thousands of emails" stolen from Hillary Clinton which could be used to damage her campaign. He had learned this about three weeks earlier. Two months later, when WikiLeaks started releasing DNC emails, Australian officials alerted the Americans about Papadopoulos' remarks. This is what started it all.

[rogue06]

Reading the methodology of the study, I come to the conclusion that their description of such sites is hyper-partisan. There is zero rationale for why any particular site is included in their hit list; they merely describe them collectively in highly disparaging terms. That they lump anyone who identifies as a patriot as "hard conservative" tells me all I need to know about where they're coming from. This study wasn't worth the electrons it disturbed. It validates your POV, however, so I can see why you like it.

It lists Drudge Report which merely links to news providers including some on the far left like Mother Jones and Daily Kos.

[Starlight]

There is zero rationale for why any particular site is included in their hit list; they merely describe them collectively in highly disparaging terms.

They give the rationale that these sites were judged by multiple people independently of each other to fail to meet at least 3 of 5 criteria they set up for measuring reliability. I think they would be better to refer to these sites as "significantly outside the mainstream" or "3rd tier sources". They are talking about websites that are not the mainstream media (what I would call "1st tier"), and not well-established professionally-operated 'alternative news sources' that are outside the mainstream (what I would call "2nd tier"), but ones that are operating in the tabloid rag / opinionated blogs kind of space (what I would call "3rd tier"). I think they don't help themselves by labeling these as "fake news" sources because obviously much of what is posted by these 3rd-tier tabloid / opinion pieces isn't necessarily false, although it is often a creative mix of truths and interpretations. But I will grant you that as far as I can see, their published data doesn't specify exactly why their dozen judges put a particular website in that category.

That they lump anyone who identifies as a patriot as "hard conservative" tells me all I need to know about where they're coming from.

They didn't.

Their computer processed the connections between users on facebook and spat out a connected graph that grouped users together based on connections and what they were liking and sharing. The study authors manually looked at different regions of that graph and gave them a label that they themselves felt described that group of users. They labelled various groups like Libertarians, Occupy, Environmental, Hard Conservatives etc and within each of those groups they gave arbitrary labels to various subgroups (e.g. in the case of Hard Conservatives, their subgroups include "Anti-immigration", "Anti-liberal", "Militia", "Patriots" etc). That is the study authors putting their own arbitrary label on the output of their computer generated graph to help with their own understanding of the connections between different groups of people.

It is not them starting with the assumption that "we'll lump anyone who identifies as a patriot as 'hard conservative'". That's just not at all what they did and is completely misunderstanding their process.

[Mountain Man]

The Nunes' memo has been such a bombshell that the second memo recently released by Senators Chuck Grassley and Lindsey Graham has mostly flown under our radar, but it not only corroborates the Nunes' memo but contains some bombshells of its own.

Source: Grassley-Graham Memo: Dossier Author Christopher Steele Lied to FBI, FBI Didn�t Tell FISA Court

the FBI did not tell the FISA court (FISC) that the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee were behind the dossier.

The Grassley-Graham memo spells out exactly why the two senators recommended Steele for a criminal investigation, for lying to the FBI.

The FBI included in its initial FISA warrant application in October 2016 a September 2016 Yahoo News article that contained information that seemingly corroborated the dossier.

Steele apparently told the FBI that he had not spoken to Yahoo News for the article, and the FBI related that in its application to the FISC. The FBI learned in October he had unauthorized contacts with media, and suspended its relationship with Steele.

However, in a January 2017 FISA application renewal on Page, it noted in a footnote that it had suspended its relationship with Steele based on unauthorized contacts with the media in October 2016, but still continued to defend that he had nothing to do with the Yahoo News article. The FBI also did so in subsequent renewals.

http://www.breitbart.com/big-governm...ll-fisa-court/

© Copyright Original Source

Wow.

[One Bad Pig]

They give the rationale that these sites were judged by multiple people independently of each other to fail to meet at least 3 of 5 criteria they set up for measuring reliability. I think they would be better to refer to these sites as "significantly outside the mainstream" or "3rd tier sources". They are talking about websites that are not the mainstream media (what I would call "1st tier"), and not well-established professionally-operated 'alternative news sources' that are outside the mainstream (what I would call "2nd tier"), but ones that are operating in the tabloid rag / opinionated blogs kind of space (what I would call "3rd tier"). I think they don't help themselves by labeling these as "fake news" sources because obviously much of what is posted by these 3rd-tier tabloid / opinion pieces isn't necessarily false, although it is often a creative mix of truths and interpretations. But I will grant you that as far as I can see, their published data doesn't specify exactly why their dozen judges put a particular website in that category.

Then by your own criteria, at least two of the sites on the list with which I am familiar should be considered 2nd tier - namely, the Patriot Post and CNS News - for they are certainly well-established and professionally-operated.

They didn't.

Their computer processed the connections between users on facebook and spat out a connected graph that grouped users together based on connections and what they were liking and sharing. The study authors manually looked at different regions of that graph and gave them a label that they themselves felt described that group of users. They labelled various groups like Libertarians, Occupy, Environmental, Hard Conservatives etc and within each of those groups they gave arbitrary labels to various subgroups (e.g. in the case of Hard Conservatives, their subgroups include "Anti-immigration", "Anti-liberal", "Militia", "Patriots" etc). That is the study authors putting their own arbitrary label on the output of their computer generated graph to help with their own understanding of the connections between different groups of people.

It is not them starting with the assumption that "we'll lump anyone who identifies as a patriot as 'hard conservative'". That's just not at all what they did and is completely misunderstanding their process.

Oh, applying it as an "arbitrary label" is much better. I hope that sounded better in your head.