David Sirota became persona non grata with the establishment media

Submitted by gjohnsit on Sun, 04/07/2019 - 12:40am

This is how a newspaper has chosen to use its oped page in the last 16 days pic.twitter.com/KMjnZOIlmQ

— David Sirota (@davidsirota) April 3, 2019

David Sirota just can't help repeatedly making the mistake of doing his job.
This has got him into trouble with the establishment media and the Democratic Party.
When the establishment decided that Beto O'Rourke was going to be the new Obama, and that he could be sold as some sort of progressive, Sirota foolishly pointed out reality.
It didn't go over well.

Oh look. A supporter of Bernie Sanders attacking a Democrat. This is seriously dangerous. We know Trump is in the White House and attacking Dems is doing Trump’s bidding. I hope Senator Sanders repudiates these attacks in 2019. https://t.co/41A4uxtWGY

— Neera Tanden (@neeratanden) December 4, 2018

At that point the Democratic establishment freaked out.

Several other pundits and journalists—even television writer David Simon, creator of The Wire—echoed Tanden's bizarre framing, describing Sirota's tweet as the start of a war on Beto and proof of an alleged coordinated smear campaign that could be traced back to Bernie Sanders. "Inside Bernie-world's war on Beto O'Rourke," reported NBC. "Democrats trying to annihilate an O'Rourke Campaign," Vanity Fair cried. Channeling his inner Borat, columnist Jonathan Chait wrote, “"Why the Bernie Movement Must Crush Beto O'Rourke," at New York Magazine. Meanwhile, Charles Pierce at Esquire fretted over "a concerted effort from the Bernie Sanders camp to paint O'Rourke as a tool of the oil and gas industry." The Hill, no stranger to smear campaigns they usually aim at Sanders, reported that "Sanders supporters deny coordinated attacks on O'Rourke's progressive credentials."

Sirota is an actual investigative journalist, which is rare in this day and age.
It's so rare that the people who call themselves "journalists" not only don't recognize one when they see one, but they don't even know (or care to know) what an investigative journalist is.
Which explains why this article came out a few weeks ago.

Sirota’s hiring as a senior adviser and speechwriter was announced by the Sanders campaign on Tuesday morning after The Atlantic contacted the campaign and inquired about the undisclosed role Sirota held while attacking other Democrats.

It's an impressive scoop by the Atlantic (the same outfit that wrote Here Comes the Berniebro in 2015).
There was only two problem's with the article:

1) It failed to provide any evidence to back up it's claim.

But there was a problem with Dovere’s bombshell: It wasn’t supported by any real evidence.
The story hinged on an unverifiable quote which the speaker claims was misrepresented, along with innuendo stemming from the fact that Sirota deleted thousands of tweets following his employment. Paste spoke to multiple campaign insiders familiar with the matter, all of whom disputed Dovere’s timeline and narrative.

2) It wasn't true.

But it is not merely the Atlantic’s lack of evidence for its core claim, the obvious errors in its article, the Guardian’s public denials and demands for a correction, the ongoing tweaking of its storyline, or the vehement denials of multiple people that call into serious question the Atlantic’s core claims. Documentary evidence does the same.
...There was one fact and one fact only that made the Atlantic article so seemingly damaging: that Sirota was operating with an explicit agreement as an informal adviser and speechwriter during his controversial investigative reporting about O’Rourke and others in December and January. And that claim is manifestly false.
It’s hard to overstate how many other media outlets uncritically repeated the Atlantic’s false timeline with no attempt made to verify whether it was true.

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Comments

Submitted by snoopydawg on Sun, 04/07/2019 - 1:09am

lol

Oh look. A supporter of Bernie Sanders attacking a Democrat. This is seriously dangerous. We know Trump is in the White House and attacking Dems is doing Trump’s bidding. I hope Senator Sanders repudiates these attacks in 2019.

Raise your hand if you read Soledad O'Brian's tweet calling Tulsi idiotic? Or heard about diaries on ToP that are so anti Tulsi that if people there had said things like that about Hillary they would have been banned before they hit 'submit'?

Or the ones where people say horrible things about Bernie. You know that they get away with it because he's Not A Democrat!!

I had some fun replying to Neera's tweet and others in the thread.

—

Scientists are concerned that conspiracy theories may die out if they keep coming true at the current alarming rate.

Submitted by p cook on Sat, 10/19/2019 - 11:25pm

(No subject)

Submitted by lotlizard on Sun, 04/07/2019 - 1:29am

“Tips for a post-Mueller media from 9 Russiagate skeptics” —FAIR

https://fair.org/home/tips-for-a-post-mueller-media-from-nine-russiagate...

It seems like David Sirota was an early test case or “proof of concept.” Now the elites have put the model into mass production, deplatforming everyone who doesn’t toe the line, while making multi-millionaires of the most popular among those who do.

Submitted by Pluto's Republic on Sun, 04/07/2019 - 7:12pm

That was a great video of Aaron Mate'

@lotlizard

I could recite the story in my sleep, but I like the way Aaron tells it best.

Submitted by lotlizard on Sun, 04/07/2019 - 1:43am

Sirota worked for AIPAC and was a fellow at John Podesta’s CAP

(Center for American Progress).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Sirota

If even a David Sirota can fall out of favor, what chance would those journalists have who’ve been in Israel backers’ and neocon-neolib Dems’ sights from the start?

Submitted by Centaurea on Sun, 04/07/2019 - 4:02am

Also,

@lotlizard
After the 2016 election, Sirota was slated to become CEO of True Blue Media, the outfit owned by David Brock that operates ShareBlue. (ShareBlue was formerly known as Correct the Record.) At that point, Brock was calling True Blue "the Breitbart of the left".

Before taking the position, Sirota backed out, saying the circumstances of the job had changed. It would be interesting to know the backstory.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/stevenperlberg/david-sirota-has-bac...

—

"Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep."
~Rumi

"If you want revolution, be it."
~Caitlin Johnstone

Submitted by Not Henry Kissinger on Sun, 04/07/2019 - 1:21pm

Sneerat Random...

still playing the victim on behalf of moneyed interests.

Of course, Neera herself would NEVER say anything derogatory about other Democrats:

In one note, Neera Tanden groused that whoever had let Hillary Clinton use a private email address for her State Department correspondence should be “drawn and quartered.”

In another, she called for Mrs. Clinton to stop stalling on whether she opposed the Keystone pipeline, worrying that “dodging another issue” would hurt her in the Democratic primaries.

And when Mrs. Clinton’s team dallied over whether to publicly criticize David Brock, a longtime ally, for demanding Senator Bernie Sanders’s medical records, Ms. Tanden was blunt.

“Hillary. God,” Ms. Tanden wrote. “Her instincts are suboptimal.”

....

In May 2015, New York City’s mayor, Bill de Blasio, emailed Ms. Tanden and Mr. Podesta to let them know that he was scheduled to appear on the MSNBC show “Morning Joe” and would likely offer his opinion of Mrs. Clinton’s policy vision.

“I find him a bit insufferable,” Ms. Tanden wrote to Mr. Podesta. (The mayor was frozen out over the ensuing months and denied a prime speaking slot at the Democratic convention this summer.)
...

Ms. Tanden’s internal critiques may have damaged her relationships with other members of the concentric Clinton circles, and in the immutable fashion of Washington, she seems more likely to be punished than rewarded for her honesty. Asked about the WikiLeaks releases, Ms. Tanden said in an email that while she would not authenticate any of the messages, their leaking had been “a profoundly painful experience.”

...

Some of Ms. Tanden’s sharpest internal criticisms concerned Mrs. Clinton’s private email account, which prompted a federal investigation that is plaguing Mrs. Clinton anew. On Friday, the Federal Bureau of Investigation said it had uncovered a new trove of emails after seizing an electronic device shared by Anthony D. Weiner and his estranged wife, Huma Abedin, a top aide to Mrs. Clinton.

When Ms. Tanden first saw news reports about the private account in March 2015, she exchanged a series of emails with Mr. Podesta bemoaning how they had gotten into such a situation in the first place. She singled out other aides, including Cheryl D. Mills, a longtime senior adviser, for not recognizing the danger sooner.

“This is a cheryl special,” Ms. Tanden wrote. “Know you love her, but this stuff is like her Achilles heel. Or kryptonite. she just can’t say no.”

As the controversy wore on, Ms. Tanden griped about the White House “crapping” on Mrs. Clinton, and insisted that Mrs. Clinton ought to make a public statement right away. She noted that Mrs. Clinton, after years of enduring attacks and scandals she regarded as trumped-up, had a tendency to be stubborn about acknowledging error.

...

Ms. Tanden was alert to the potential threat posed by Mr. Sanders’s outsider campaign. She cautioned Mr. Podesta that aggressively going after Mr. Sanders could backfire.

“Just game out what that does to Hillary,” she wrote in August 2015. “When we went after Obama, she got killed for it. Reaffirmed all her negatives, strengthened him. We had no idea it was kryptonite for us to do that, but it was.”

Sounds like Hillary's attack dog is on the outs with Hillary and looking for a new job. Would she dare go work for an Obama spokesmodel like Beto? What would Her think about that betrayal?

Or maybe she's just freelancing on behalf of Big Oil, earning brownie points with her future lobbying clients for hippie punching 'disloyal' media types.

In any event, nice to see Sirota cutting ties with Neera's CAP snake pit. He's far better off in Bernie's camp than with those Clinton creeps.

—

The current working assumption appears to be that our Shroedinger's Cat system is still alive. But what if we all suspect it's not, and the real problem is we just can't bring ourselves to open the box?

Submitted by snoopydawg on Sun, 04/07/2019 - 6:21pm

I sure remember when Hillary turned nasty

@Not Henry Kissinger

during her campaign with Obama. I made quite a few phone calls to her campaign about it.

“Just game out what that does to Hillary,” she wrote in August 2015. “When we went after Obama, she got killed for it. Reaffirmed all her negatives, strengthened him. We had no idea it was kryptonite for us to do that, but it was.”

This was just unbelievable that she would even go there.

"Hey, why should I back out now? There is always the chance that someone might do an RFK on Obama."

still playing the victim on behalf of moneyed interests.

Of course, Neera herself would NEVER say anything derogatory about other Democrats:

In one note, Neera Tanden groused that whoever had let Hillary Clinton use a private email address for her State Department correspondence should be “drawn and quartered.”

In another, she called for Mrs. Clinton to stop stalling on whether she opposed the Keystone pipeline, worrying that “dodging another issue” would hurt her in the Democratic primaries.

And when Mrs. Clinton’s team dallied over whether to publicly criticize David Brock, a longtime ally, for demanding Senator Bernie Sanders’s medical records, Ms. Tanden was blunt.

“Hillary. God,” Ms. Tanden wrote. “Her instincts are suboptimal.”

....

In May 2015, New York City’s mayor, Bill de Blasio, emailed Ms. Tanden and Mr. Podesta to let them know that he was scheduled to appear on the MSNBC show “Morning Joe” and would likely offer his opinion of Mrs. Clinton’s policy vision.

“I find him a bit insufferable,” Ms. Tanden wrote to Mr. Podesta. (The mayor was frozen out over the ensuing months and denied a prime speaking slot at the Democratic convention this summer.)
...

Ms. Tanden’s internal critiques may have damaged her relationships with other members of the concentric Clinton circles, and in the immutable fashion of Washington, she seems more likely to be punished than rewarded for her honesty. Asked about the WikiLeaks releases, Ms. Tanden said in an email that while she would not authenticate any of the messages, their leaking had been “a profoundly painful experience.”

...

Some of Ms. Tanden’s sharpest internal criticisms concerned Mrs. Clinton’s private email account, which prompted a federal investigation that is plaguing Mrs. Clinton anew. On Friday, the Federal Bureau of Investigation said it had uncovered a new trove of emails after seizing an electronic device shared by Anthony D. Weiner and his estranged wife, Huma Abedin, a top aide to Mrs. Clinton.

When Ms. Tanden first saw news reports about the private account in March 2015, she exchanged a series of emails with Mr. Podesta bemoaning how they had gotten into such a situation in the first place. She singled out other aides, including Cheryl D. Mills, a longtime senior adviser, for not recognizing the danger sooner.

“This is a cheryl special,” Ms. Tanden wrote. “Know you love her, but this stuff is like her Achilles heel. Or kryptonite. she just can’t say no.”

As the controversy wore on, Ms. Tanden griped about the White House “crapping” on Mrs. Clinton, and insisted that Mrs. Clinton ought to make a public statement right away. She noted that Mrs. Clinton, after years of enduring attacks and scandals she regarded as trumped-up, had a tendency to be stubborn about acknowledging error.

...

Ms. Tanden was alert to the potential threat posed by Mr. Sanders’s outsider campaign. She cautioned Mr. Podesta that aggressively going after Mr. Sanders could backfire.

“Just game out what that does to Hillary,” she wrote in August 2015. “When we went after Obama, she got killed for it. Reaffirmed all her negatives, strengthened him. We had no idea it was kryptonite for us to do that, but it was.”

Sounds like Hillary's attack dog is on the outs with Hillary and looking for a new job. Would she dare go work for an Obama spokesmodel like Beto? What would Her think about that betrayal?

Or maybe she's just freelancing on behalf of Big Oil, earning brownie points with her future lobbying clients for hippie punching 'disloyal' media types.

In any event, nice to see Sirota cutting ties with Neera's CAP snake pit. He's far better off in Bernie's camp than with those Clinton creeps.

—

Scientists are concerned that conspiracy theories may die out if they keep coming true at the current alarming rate.