Matt Taibbi

http://observer.com/2000/06/from-russia-with-lust

cool guy

eXile was the best source of Russian news for years, even if Taibbi and Ames are / were creeps at times.

not likely

Seriously, it was probably the only source of unbiased, fearless Russia-based journalism in English until they were shut down by the government. Whatever dickishness they got up to (Ames used to review prostitutes in a regular column) their coverage was peerless.

sure and you prob think taibbis writing on american finance is good too

I rarely read it. Seems ok, if a bit simplistic.

eXile was genuinely great, though.

“We wrote a whole bunch of editorials about the size of Putin’s penis,” said Mr. Taibbi.

o taibbi u so crazy

“People are afraid of what our paper will write about them, so they give us free shit,” Mr. Taibbi said.

“That’s the thing about Russia,” Mr. Taibbi said. “It’s a totally unironic place. When I first was a student over there I had this girlfriend who had this mobster boyfriend, so she only saw me between 3 and 6 in the afternoon, but as a going-away present when I left my exchange program, she gave me this picture of herself naked in a bathtub. It was totally serious, like, ‘Here, for you to remember me by.’ An American woman would never do that except as a joke or to be sexy.”

american chix man

Journalist James Verini, while interviewing Taibbi in a Manhattan restaurant for Vanity Fair, said Taibbi cursed and threw a coffee at him, and accosted him as he tried to get away, all in response to Verini's volunteered opinion that Taibbi's book, The Exile: Sex, Drugs, and Libel in the New Russia, was "redundant and discursive."[18] Taibbi later said the incident was "an aberration from how I've behaved in the last six or seven years."[19]

taibbi's financial journalism has occasional issues, but for the most part is pretty good. i'm consistently surprised by how few other journalists have gone his route (in terms of financial reporting), all things considered.

b/c it's not as exciting as having Bloody Marys with Cokie and George Will?

anyway he uses obscenity in a whee-I'm-at-Rolling-Stone manner but he was the first journalist in 2008 and 2009 to explain credit default swaps and such in a clear manner.

legume what is your beef with dude's financial reporting exactly?

another politics thread of substance and enlightenment

legume what is your beef with dude's financial reporting exactly?

― the route is ban (k3vin k.),

was just going to ask this myself

he doesnt know what hes talking abt!

i mean 'clear' try wrong

also is writing is basically the worst

another politics thread of substance and enlightenment

― World Congress of Itch (Dr Morbius), Thursday, June 7, 2012 10:24 AM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this guy would appeal to you, because he is so substantial

legume what is your beef with dude's financial reporting exactly?

― the route is ban (k3vin k.), Thursday, June 7, 2012 10:10 AM (29 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

kevinclovestofu

oh, this is gonna be one of these threads

dude is overrated by people who think he is 'cool,' underrated on actual writing performance by people turned off by that perception

Malcolm Gladwell S/D C/D

nobody commented on this!

errors is a single piece http://prospect.org/article/errors-matt-taibbi

dude is overrated by people who think he is 'cool,' underrated on actual writing performance by people turned off by that perception

― mh, Thursday, June 7, 2012 10:42 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

o god stfu

um who are these people who think he's *quote* cool *quote*?

Hunter Thompson aficionados who are into the renegade/substance abuse style of writing? I've run into a few, and count that shit as a guilty pleasure sometimes

lag∞n, I get yr point but there's a place for a populist reporter who appeals to those who aren't picking up well-researched political mags on the regular

it'd be nice if dude had a fact checker, though

yeah itd be cool if there was a populist finical reporter who a. knew wtf he was talking abt b. wasnt the worst writer in the world c. wasnt a weird self involved misogynist

this person clearly is not matt taibbi

what abt someone like felix salmon

he writes mostly for a p financially literate audience and doesnt generally have taibbis passion for publicly s.h.a.m.i.n.g.i.n.g. the industry

yeah itd be cool if there was a populist finical reporter who a. knew wtf he was talking abt b. wasnt the worst writer in the world c. wasnt a weird self involved misogynist

kinda hard to argue against this

“That’s the thing about Russia,” Mr. Taibbi said. “It’s a totally unironic place. When I first was a student over there I had this girlfriend who had this mobster boyfriend, so she only saw me between 3 and 6 in the afternoon, but as a going-away present when I left my exchange program, she gave me this picture of herself naked in a bathtub. It was totally serious, like, ‘Here, for you to remember me by.’ An American woman would never do that except as a joke or to be sexy.”

american chix man

― lag∞n, Thursday, June 7, 2012 7:12 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol what a simp

in a way taibbi then is perfect -- nobody knows how this shit works but people know in their bones that something is grossly wrong and the great majority are being shafted.

felix salmon is great (great name too) but he wouldn't have come up with "vampire squid" either

but yes the exile crew and their 'aesthetic' are p gross

Indisputable that they were gross. 90% of their stuff was gutter-level gonzo / Vice offensiveness but the other 10% was worth more than pretty much every mainstream reporter working for an English-language paper put together.

i will admit to liking "war nerd"

Dolan/Brecher stuff was usually p.great. When I first became aware of Vice it seemed like the worst parts of eXile combined with NY/etc advertising dollars.

sharivari srs request for evidence here, also did they do like actual reporting or was it more that they were willing to print opinions that were taboo

Both. Can't really offer links atm but will look into it later.

There was a lot of very good reporting / analysis and a definite willingness to print things that other people were too gutless to look at. More importantly, i think they understood Russian politics better than any other news source and were willing to call out all sides, and the press, on their faults.

Nothing about Taibbi is gonzo/druggy, tho.

his style is kinda gonzo imho

Taibbi's 2004 campaign journal Spanking the Donkey cemented his status as an incisive, irreverent, zero-bullshit reporter. In one memorable scene, Taibbi dropped acid then interviewed the former chief of the Office of National Drug Policy—while wearing a Viking helmet.

hmmmmm

...while wearing a viking helmet

i know that in the US today where we're practically flooded with leftist writers tackling economic crimes w/ humor and outrage, Taibbi seems redundant and his flaws are magnified. but imagine an alternate reality where actually every financial writer is either a shill for Wall St. or a blathering pundit on the Sunday morning news programs, and you can see why, even for his flaws, people would embrace Taibbi (who is often very informative - okay, so he sometimes gets confused about how derivatives work, so do I). u know. theoretically.

his crimes against reality go way beyond not understanding derivatives

r u on the jp morgan payroll?

lagoon, would you recommend Michael Lewis

he's waiting for that one perfect anti-oligarchy journo

we can't let the perfect be the enemy of the good! lulz.

Ok I can't get to the original story because of a paywall, but this prospect thing is pretty bullshit. It's 90% insider baseball about who supposedly has what responsibility, and most of that isn't factual at all but just disagreeing with Taibbi on intepretation.

Look at what it says about Gensler, for example! It doesn't even argue with Taibbi, just whine that Gensler is supposed to be fighting "to close the loopholes in derivatives regulation that Taibbi complains about later" -- which is basically Taibbi's point, that Gensler is a former goldman banker and maybe not the most trustworthy person in this position.

Again, the prospect piece complains that taibbi writes that biden "seems more interested in foreign policy than financial reform" but in fact they say "Biden has taken the lead on the stimulus and jobs efforts." That's not a factual error -- that's a matter of editorial opinion.

Later on the prospect piece confuses Taibbi's figure on "total cost of bailouts" with expenses to date exclusively for TARP.

And then a dispute over the effectiveness of the CFPA and whether it is "castrated-in-advance" or just "somewhat compromised." Again, not a factual error.

ffs.

In this sort of policy analysis, everyone either overstates or understates or only gets part of the picture. These are mostly not errors (there may be some actual minor ones but I can't check without the article) but differences in interpretation and expectation, which reveal more about the prospect author than anyone else. I mean, lo these three years later, whose projections for govt. policy outcomes w/r/t the banks seem like they were more prescient?

It's rather difficult to find stuff in the Exile archive as i'm essentially just googling half-remembered stories i read eight years ago but there's lots of really good, really detailed material there.

As a semi-random example, Mark Ames' piece on Montenegro:

http://exiledonline.com/kremlin-whores-how-mccain-staff-sold-countries-to-putin/

Press analysis from Taibbi:

http://exile.ru/articles/detail.php?ARTICLE_ID=6274&IBLOCK_ID=35

Kompromat Korner, which gave a regular update on corruption:

http://www.exile.ru/articles/detail.php?ARTICLE_ID=8213&IBLOCK_ID=35

Again,this isn't "the best" of their work but it does show that they did take the role more seriously than it looked at times.

Also worth remembering that, regardless of how often Luk3 H@rding likes to bleat on about the time he was jostled by a man in a leather jacket at Sheremetyevo airport, Ames is probably one of the the only Western journalists the Russian government has legitimately run out of town for being too dangerous.

maybe he just scored the wrong babe one too many times, man

not that i nec. want to side with putinism or anything

They say they also take advantage of what they like to call the “white god factor” and make trips to the provinces. “Tens of millions of people live in dire circumstances, stranded in the center of the world’s largest continent, with little hope of going anywhere,” said Mr. Ames. “Which means–sexual opportunity for me.”

rly cool guy

in post soviet russia you rape and pillage across mongols

poverty for you-sexual opportunity for me

that was the underlying principle of the columbian triangle right?

from taibbi's boehner article, this is just a really nice bit of prose styling, describing "the 2000s, back when America was still unfucked enough to enjoy a phony real estate boom and launch recreational wars of conquest in the Middle East."

http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2012/06/15/how-new-york-will-improve-its-on-street-parking/

p decent summary of asshole Dimon's testimony, if you'd like to get away from Taibbi's ancient peccadilloes:

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/senators-grovel-embarrass-themselves-at-dimon-hearing-20120615

from the comments, a nice response to the salmon piece: http://quantiger.wordpress.com/2012/06/15/is-11-billion-a-fair-price-for-new-york-citys-parking-meters/

hmm maybe rando blogger shoulda done basic research on the subject, where they'd quickly learn that the only thing being privitized is operations

http://www.forbes.com/sites/markbergen/2012/06/14/what-matt-taibbi-misses-on-the-nyc-parking-meter-deal/

“The basic structure is totally different—Chicago sold the system for a one-time cash infusion,” a Bloomberg spokeswoman told Dana Rubinstein. “We are looking for a private operator but we would still own the meters.” The city’s request, dug up by Rubinstein, is more subtle, but no less cutting. “In contrast to certain precedent U.S. parking transactions, the City’s objective is not to structure an upfront payment,” (emphasis theirs). If this commitment falters, then Taibbi should scream “grifter.”

"his acidic tongue"

really not keen on another argument here. i'll just note that being on forbes doesn't make one less of a rando blogger, nor do promises from the bloomberg administration give one cause for hope, and finally that the "operations" bit doesn't mean the revenue stream isn't going to go to the private operator and furthermore the details on the administration retaining certain elements of control were in the salmon piece already that the blogger was responding to, and aren't at all relevant to the y'know, math, that the blog post actually contained.

+ the plan also means cutting city jobs with decent pay and benefits, regardless.

if bloomberg were throwing away easy money, this would be a huge issue for transit activist groups. it's not really an issue at all, and it's only 'a scandal' for people who haven't been paying attention and don't care to read the details. the revenue stream is not going to go to the private operator. prices will eventually go up, the money will go to the city. there is no reason to believe that nyc public sector would be better at doing the high-tech renovations involved. and 'decent pay and benefits' don't come out of thin air - there's no end to the waste you could justify as 'decent pay and benefits' - you could theoretically hire a million people to do this.

fwiw salmon also seemed to be unaware of some of this, but I still linked it cause he called taibbi a parasitical suburbanite

haha

and hey read pg 10

http://www.scribd.com/doc/96706824/Request-for-Qualifications-NYC-Parking-System

http://dealbreaker.com/images/thumbs/matttaibbi.gifhttp://dealbreaker.com/images/thumbs/matttaibbi.gifhttp://dealbreaker.com/images/thumbs/matttaibbi.gif

ok everyone is writing as though the bulk of the revenue stream will go to the operator, so i don't know where you're getting this from. plus i read page 10 and it said nothing. plus on top of that i skimmed taibbi's article and he actually accurately reported the claim that NY would retain full control of rates and violations enforcement. So maybe you want to cut bloomberg more slack than taibbi in terms of future projections, but taibbi's working with the same facts everyone else is and, as usual, you're living in made up citing poorly-skimmed pdf-land.

it was my impression the the worst of exile's excesses (in terms of journalism but also private affairs) belonged to ames, not taibbi, but i could be corrected.

ok everyone is writing as though the bulk of the revenue stream will go to the operator, so i don't know where you're getting this from

"In contrast to certain precedent U.S. parking transactions, the City's objective is not to structure an upfront payment. Rather, the City views the possible PMA as an asset management partnership through which a Private Manager would earn compensation for driving up long-term value and service to the public and creating Parking Service upside for the city."

page 10 says:

"The city has an authorized headcount of 466 employees in FY13 to operate, maintain and provide other key functions to support the operations of the Parking System. Employees are represented by various unions and are covered by collective bargaining agreements. Respondents will be asked to provide with their explaination of plans concerning the utilization of these City employees."

the city is, straight up, *not selling the parking meters* and it's not even losing a single union member. this is why it's not big news unless your only source of information is a Taibbi article. I don't care how 'everyone is writing'. for a guy who's usually pretty thorough I'm amazing you reposted someone who started his math assuming every single meter in the city gets used for 12h and that rates don't already vary by area (and 'the real price' varies exponentially by area) instead of just...looking it up. it's on the same pdf above, and it's not 360 million dollars, after-cost revenue was 93m last year.

despite that, his math is mostly stupid because he underestimates - it could be way more than 360 million dollars if the city actually had leeway in pricing - which is one of the the points of this program. there is no reason to believe that the nyc public sector would be better at designing and implementing this technology just as there is no reason to believe that local public servants should be building subway cars.

think bout it: if bloomberg were giving away a trillion dollars *maybe the only people who would notice wouldn't be taibbi and rando blogger doing sloppy math*.

are we done?

'I'm amazing you resposted" = 'I'm amazed you resposted"

you are an amazing reposter. i admit to enjoying the whole righteous indig thing taibbi does. its a cheap thrill.

but i'm kind of a simpleton and i still listen to my old punk rock records for insight.

are we done?

yeah, we've been done.

i admit to enjoying the whole righteous indig thing taibbi does.

when it becomes a schtick, it loses some of its ooomph. plain facts, clearly presented, should always do the heavy lifting for righteous indignation.

schtick: inversely proportional to ooomph.

yeah i think taibbi's doing god's work but i wish he didn't think he has to come up with a new three-word name to call lloyd blankfein every time he writes a blog post. i mean i like thompson on nixon as much as the next guy but senator, i knew hst, i read hst, etc.

that yeltsin obit tho i love.

he doesnt know what hes talking abt!

― lag∞n, Thursday, 7 June 2012 10:35 (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

eh what is there to know really, they make up all that finance stuff up anyways it's all crap

^exactly, this saves me a lotta difficult reading

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-scam-wall-street-learned-from-the-mafia-20120620?print=true

Good stuff.

It's passages like this one that ultimately give me a bit of a problem with Taibbi:

Who ultimately loses in these deals? Well, to take just one example, the New Jersey Health Care Facilities Finance Authority, the agency that issues bonds for the state's hospitals, had their interest rates rigged by the Carollo defendants on $17 million in bonds. Since then, more than a dozen New Jersey hospitals have closed, mostly in poor neighborhoods.

Up until that point, the piece, albeit heavy on schtick, basically made a reasonable and accurate summary of the scam. But the connection he draws here is just absurd. Based on Taibbi's own facts, we're talking about, what, 10 basis points lost? 20? 50? Even if it's 50 basis points, the lost interest on $17m would amount to $85,000/year -- real money, but hardly enough to make or break a hospital closing.

On the other hand, he doesn't say that the interest rate issues caused the hospital closings. You can just read it as saying "clearly these hospitals were hurting for cash, and some of the cash they needed was instead taken by unscrupulous parties."

He's not inaccurate, and you can read him perfectly reasonably, but you could also jump to some bad inferences without too much sloppy reading/thinking.

I was more put off by his claims that terms like "nickel" and "dime" were "code" rather than just common slang/argot.

Oh come on. "Since then" implies a causal relationship.

I guess that's the kind of writing that works for Rolling Stone, but I find his constant resorting to hyperbole a little tiresome. "It's as though the mafia and the zetas made an bet to see who could steal the most candy from dying babies" etc.

Like, this was a skimming/bid-rigging scheme. If, e.g., major grocery chains conspired to fix, say, milk prices, you would probably say "that's really fucked up, and they're screwing over ordinary working people." And that would be bad enough. You wouldn't have to embellish it by insinuating that they were causing children to starve to death.

hes sloppy because hes convinced of his moral rightness, which make him less morally right

lag∞n who is your go-to pundit for suitable rage/accuracy

(don't say morbs)

but i want to say morbs

i guess i just dont like rage that much in my reporting, which is not to say that it not justified, mabye i just prefer to get the facts then manufacture my own rage, to come totally clean w/this thread i dont like hunter s thompson either and i read all the wonderkin technocrat bloggers even tho i dont think theyre cool people

not just saying this because i know him personally but ghost rider strikes a p good balance between having some emotional energy and knowing what hes talking abt

plus he's a motorcycle hero

and an admirable young man, who suspects that his invitations to discuss matters publicly are dwindling thanks to his comprehensively otm hack list

here is matt taibbi talkin abt fear and loathing on the campaign trail http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/books/2012/06/hunter_s_thompson_fear_and_loathing_on_the_campaign_trail_72_review_by_matt_taibbi_.html

It’s been read and reread by practically every living reporter in this country, and just as you’re likely to find a dog-eared paperback copy of Evelyn Waugh’s Scoop somewhere in every foreign correspondent’s backpack, you can still spot the familiar red (it was red back then) cover of Fear and Loathing ’72 poking out of the duffel bags of the reporters sent to follow the likes of Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, and Barack Obama on the journalistic Siberia known as the Campaign Trail.

*puke*

I'm starting to think you don't like this guy!

you can still spot the familiar red (it was red back then) cover of Fear and Loathing ’72 poking out of the duffel bags of the reporters... on the journalistic Siberia known as the Campaign Trail.

unconsciously making villainous Nixons, or Quislingian Muskies, or Christlike McGoverns out of each new quadrennial batch of presidential pretenders.

gah why whyy

each new quadrennial batch of presidential pretenders (it was red back then) on the journalistic Siberia known as the Campaign Trail.

nooooooooo

"Quislingian"!

Good stuff:
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/this-presidential-race-should-never-have-been-this-close-20120925

Although I think he misses the other obvious point, which is that none of the serious Republican contenders want to run against Obama, who is ridiculously good at winning elections.

All the more reason it shouldn't have been this close, no?

eh, I question whether "shouldn't have been this close" is meaningful in presidential elections, as though it were equivalent to the Miami Heat only beating the Washington Wizards by a point or something.

Taibbi proves his worth when he writes lines like this imo:

Unless someone snags an iPhone video of Obama taking a leak on Ohio State mascot Brutus Buckeye, or stealing pain meds from a Tampa retiree and sharing them with a bunch of Japanese carmakers, the game looks pretty much up

taibbi confusing the american public w/ 300 million matt taibbis

god he is so bad at this stuff

I don't think the serious contender thing is necessarily true schwantz. this is actually prob one of the more 'winnable' elections heyo 8% unemployment and if they didn't want to run it was prob more because they didn't think they'd beat romney

If the clichés are true and the presidential race always comes down to which candidate the American people "wants to have a beer with," how many Americans will choose to sit at the bar with the coiffed Wall Street multimillionaire who fires your sister, unapologetically pays half your tax rate, keeps his money stashed in Cayman Islands partnerships or Swiss accounts in his wife's name, cheerfully encourages finance-industry bailouts while bashing "entitlements" like Medicare, waves a pom-pom while your kids go fight and die in hell-holes like Afghanistan and Iraq and generally speaking has never even visited the country that most of the rest of us call the United States, except to make sure that it's paying its bills to him on time?

wow cool sentence, now what if the cnn cliches *aren't* true, o crap

whoa, what if.

sorry I forgot yr a big fan right

what is your favorite of his long sentences

so many republicans would switch parties if Obama put bankers on trial

i like his short sentences actually. although the long ones can be funny too. what can i say? taibbi got jokes.

taibbi confusing the american public w/ 300 million matt taibbis

― iatee, Tuesday, September 25, 2012 11:44 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

one weird trick for winning the presidential election

Taibbi proves his worth when he writes lines like this imo:

Unless someone snags an iPhone video of Obama taking a leak on Ohio State mascot Brutus Buckeye, or stealing pain meds from a Tampa retiree and sharing them with a bunch of Japanese carmakers, the game looks pretty much up

― look at this quarterstaff (Hurting 2), Tuesday, September 25, 2012 9:37 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

hah to each his own but its sort of unfathomable to me how anyone anyone enjoys these smug comedy histrionics, and hes so sloppy too, is honda any sort of boogyman anymore at all, someone needs to update their incisive lefty quips spreadsheet

I'm always surprised to see him get slammed here -- his stuff basically reads like ilx zings.

the ilx house style is way pithier

not that there arent some terrible tabbi style stylist around

wow cool sentence, now what if the cnn cliches *aren't* true, o crap

what is your favorite of his long sentences

oh goodie – a sentence lecture from the author of these sentences. We're waiting, chin on fist.

comparing rolling stone articles to off handed message board posts *chin on fist*

j/k not really chin on fist

just a chin on fist thinkin bout things...

guys let's all admit we're the worst and move on

What part of your bod is your chin on right now [Started by lag∞n in September 2012, last updated 8 minutes ago by Ned Raggett on I Love Everything] 61 new answers POLL closes: September 28 (in 1 day)

http://image.blingee.com/images18/content/output/000/000/000/6f6/675542200_1774310.gif

tbf we're writing in the style of an ilx post on ilx, rolling stone isn't an ilx board, last I checked

The point is that iatee, as usual, is being a rude asshole.

to matt taibbi?

This election isn't close enough, with 0-0 being the most rational outcome.

I thought the basic premise of the Taibbi piece was fine--basically, what's the matter with Kansas? once again--except, unless I missed it (I read quickly), he completely disregards race. The idea that Obama would be getting some monstrous percentage of the vote if he were a better candidate, and if millions of putative Republicans wised up to their own interests, is rather naive. Give it whatever number you want, but there's some significant percentage of Republicans who just aren't going to vote for a black candidate--I never quite get why a writer like Taibbi just glides past that.

fwiw I apologize to matt taibbi and have sent him some cocaine and desperate russian girls as an apology

that was v big of you

This election isn't close enough, with 0-0 being the most rational outcome.

Picturing it:

http://cdn.bleacherreport.net/social_assets/nfl/Week_3/Packers_Seahawks/PackersCoach_FistPump.gif

taibbi's a smug libertarian misanthrope, but he can be pretty funny too. he tends to upset pedantic, self-serious weenie libs who make terrible posts - the iatees of the world

damn

http://farm1.staticflickr.com/132/382294911_1f38e42988_z.jpg

the taibbi piece we're talking about is a blog post btw.

Pictures of people who are not mh imo ^^

sorry guys forgot to tell you I'm matt taibbi

matt haibbi

mh I accidentally sent you ukrainian girls and not russian girls I hope its okay

my preference, really

wait, who's in Alfred's pic, that's not Taibbi, lol

I am sorry guys, I admit, I am some guy's friend who has become an ad hoc stock photo. Not Matt Taibbi. Ukrainian girls still appreciated

i think in some ways he traffics in indignation porn - kinda like when i mistakenly tune into democracy now in the car in the morning and hear the daily litanies of outrage - and i like to be as indignant as the next person (i love long-gone protest folk and get a thrill out of long-gone recitations of atrocities in protest folk songs for some reason. i should probably see someone about that. a punk rock anger thrill. not thrilling in the atrocities. and those kinds of songs DO inspire me. to do what i have no idea. mostly they confirm over and over again what i already know and have known for decades.) but does it effect things positively or creatively? or is it just enough to print crimes/stupidities in print and let them sit there in print and be read by people who love to be proven right about how wrong people can be? maybe anger is enough. as a motivator for people to act or opt out or start something of their own. i wonder sometimes. when you add funny to the equation it even becomes more problematic for me because i DO read taibbi as entertainment. i dunno...

haha, i am totally listening to phil ochs right this second in the store! and it didn't even occur to me while writing that!

taibbi is michael moore doing a hst impression

Greenwald does the same, and writing for The Guardian has crystallized his indigna-porn tendencies. I don't read him daily anymore, especially when I know one of the other liberal bloggers or even Conor Friedersdorf will pick up one of his arguments.

listening to Pink while typing this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_7xxzDkqzU

watching porn while indignantly reading this thread

I like reading Taibbi. He consistently finds (outrageous, yes) stories that I haven't heard about, explains shady financial industry goings-on clearly, and makes me chuckle.

greenwalds outrage is more humane than taibbis gonzo comedy, tho obvs they are both irredeemable monsters

Why, because they get paid for zinging and you don't?

keep it up w/the great zing corollary work in this thread champ

If lag∞n is getting paid wtf have I been sending all this money to PayPal for?

NOT getting paid

https://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-snc7/376355_10151029182077859_2100976538_n.jpg

thanking u for your passion lag∞n

each backer of my kickstater campaign will receive a unique handcraft zing

zing envy otm

once i publish my underground news zine none of u will be laughing

Truth.

you should put a 'made in brooklyn' tag after every zing

Truth.

― schwantz, Wednesday, September 26, 2012 1:04 PM (53 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mayv90mopO1qbwcxlo1_500.jpg

lessons 4 taibbi fans

#madeinbrooklyn

once i publish my underground news zine none of u will be laughing

Truth.

THAT WAS THE JOKE OMG DUDE

i knew one of the zing genius itt would attempt to work their magic on it

You ARE funny then! Phew.

if only i could find some way to monetize this talent, my ultimate dream

i definitely cringe when i read taibbi now. i wonder if he/context changed or it's just me. basically i feel like righteous anger shortchanges the seriousness of problems by creating more problems. and then i also pretty much rmde at his style.

maybe just rme

really though just sigh and skim

really need those Obama-bot lyrics for "Love Me I'm a Liberal"

("and that's why I'm turning you in" can stay)

scott, I'm not sure how you think Ochs' POV correlates to America's current-what's-left-of-the-left? The libs that Phil was mocking might as well be Michael Moore, who pseudo-lamented every Obama 'betrayal' for 3 years and is now urging his re-election.

taibbi's a smug libertarian misanthrope

libertarian? really? I have the strong impression he is very pro-regulation. views seem to align closely with Moyers & Company. I enjoyed Griftopia and have been reading his blog for years. Have I completely misread him?

@stet (after a million x-posts): Yeah, but I was just surprised he never brought that up.

i have trouble taking guys who are angry all the time seriously. you can't possibly be that angry.

it's a tough job!

some people r v angry

many people in fact

most people maybe

hello dere (and I don't even get paid)

libertarian? really? I have the strong impression he is very pro-regulation. views seem to align closely with Moyers & Company. I enjoyed Griftopia and have been reading his blog for years. Have I completely misread him?

he's a paulite w/r/t anything monetary policy and thinks things like nyc parking are bloomberg conspiracies to screw innocent westchester drivers like him from driving into the city for cheap

but its hard to fault someone whose best years were so dependent on drugs and prostitutes for being a libertarian

lol

i don't think a 'paulite' would have written this article: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/my-advice-to-the-occupy-wall-street-protesters-20111012

there was more to my sentence

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/new-york-to-repeat-chicago-s-parking-meter-catastrophe-20120613

doesn't seem to jibe with your depiction of his stance on parking

read upthread milo, already did this

where has taibbi called for a return to the gold standard?

I've never seen him suggest that farming out government services to the private sector is a good thing - cf. parking. Not terribly libertarian of him.

I understand the ease of characterizing self-righteous, loudmouth white guys as libertarians... but that covers a lot of 'progressives,' too.

yes, iatee, even if you want to argue that Taibbi is wrong about the parking deal, his reasons aren't those you ascribe to him. You don't like the guy, awesome - but you've strawmanned the fuck out of him.

Matt Taibbi: Quantitative easing is a completely lunatic program that is interestingly, not very well known here in America. Remember when Barack Obama had his 800-billion-dollar stimulus package, which was ostensibly intended to create jobs there was uproar all across the country that is this is socialism and how could we do this, just the government giving money away. Well that was actually real money that existed, that 800 billion dollars that they spent ostensibly creating jobs. Quantitative easing was a program where the Federal Reserve did like an “I Dream of Jeanie”-thing and like invented out of thin air now two trillion dollars essentially to buy T-bills and mortgage-backed securities and artificially prop-up Wall Street. And this is money that didn’t even exist and they simply were pumping it into the financial bloodstream, so that Wall Street could stay alive a little bit longer. It’s a completely insane program. There is a reason why you can’t just print money and get yourself out of economic trouble that way. There is a tremendous inflationary danger here, but they’re doing it anyway, which speaks to the total desperation and craziness of our current economy.

http://bigthink.com/ideas/26446

its better on camera

^for everyone itt who thinks taibbi is a good explainer of financial stuff my lord

he's like an uglier michael moore

if antipathy to recent QE makes one a Paulite, I think Paul Krugman needs to be lumped in as well...

...

"if antipathy to recent QE makes one a Paulite, I think Paul Krugman needs to be lumped in as well..."

Huh?

wuuut

Krugman thinks the treasury should be doing more stuff like QE and NOT worry about the inflationary danger (until it becomes like an actual danger.) Seems like that's the opposite of what Taibbi is positing above.

anyway it isnt the antipathy toward qe that makes one a paulite its the belief in real money

he's like an uglier michael moore

― iatee, Wednesday, September 26, 2012 3:02 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

tbf moor is waay better at making movies than taibbi is at writing

I don't think Taibbi is a libertarian though (or a Paulite.) There are plenty of non-Paulite who have insane inflationary fears.

yeah krugman's pretty far from a hayekian or a goldbug for that matter

"this is money that didn’t even exist!"

Taibbi's objection is about use in defense of Wall Street, not QE as a concept
Krugman, AFAIK, argues that QE hasn't gone far enough, not getting past Wall Street

iatee's argument is that Taibbi is a Paulite for his objection

xxp Right until Taibbi advocates for a return to the gold standard I don't think he should be lumped in with Ron Paul.

eh i still like taibbi better than i like moore

Taibbi's objection is about use in defense of Wall Street, not QE as a concept
Krugman, AFAIK, argues that QE hasn't gone far enough, not getting past Wall Street

this is indistinguishable

taibbis monetary views prob have more to do w/just not understanding stuff good and knee jerk dismissal of anything the government does than any sort of ideology

ideology is hard, being really angry is easy

think you guys might be giving taibbi too much credit though to think he's actually in any way thought his monetary philosophy out xpost lol

There is a lot of stuff to be angry about tbqf.

hey man free country

it's definitely true that monetary expansion will "benefit wall street" but just about any economic improvement would. if your position is that anything that makes bank balance sheets healthier is p much evil at this point, then a looser central bank is going to look like not giving the vampire quids (tm) their punishment.

its kind of like saying hit records are evil because they prevent the major labels from collapsing

taibbi is pretty irritating and has an awful rhetorical style but i don't think a guy who favors breaking up monopolies and tighter bank regulations can fairly be called a 'libertarian,' no matter how many vague worries about 'fake money' they express.

you can’t just print money and get yourself out of economic trouble that way. There is a tremendous inflationary danger here...

I have a hard time believing Taibbi hasn't figured out this whole "printing money" thing, but if this is an accurate quote, then he hasn't learned much from his last four years of interviewing and writing.

In a nutshell: during the boom years before 2008, vast boatloads of money were created out of nothing, and by this I mean many trillions of dollars. Except this money wasn't created out of nothing by the Federal Reserve. Instead, it was banks that did it. This is what banks do, even when they are operating properly -- as they were not during the boom. Creating money out of "nothing" is their business model.

In 2008, when the credit bubble built by the banks collapsed, many, many trillions of dollars of money vanished. They reverted back to thin air. But the economy was still built around the reality that this money once had, and that reality persisted in the form of contracts. Except there wasn't enough money in the whole world to fullfill those contracts. That is why the Fed has printed so much money lately. It isn't dangerously inflationary. It is profoundly necessary.

The worst part of this is that Congress should have been the agent for the Fed's easing. Congress should have authorized the spending and the Fed should have monetized the debt by buying up a few trillions of T-bonds and T-bills. Instead, the Congress went batshit and balked at doing its plain duty to the country and the Fed has been pumping all this largesse directly into the banks instead, where it does much less good.

Taibbi ought to know this. Apparently he doesn't.

he was just labeled a libertarian re monetary policy xp

confusion about QE is pretty widespread among radical populist types in general. But that said, it is sort of a big juicy target, and the main effect (insofar as it has had any) has been to shove some money to people who don't need it. It's just that inflation doesn't really enter the picture.

taibbi's written about this more cogently elsewhere actually.

and the main effect (insofar as it has had any) has been to shove some money to people who don't need it.

― s.clover, Wednesday, September 26, 2012 4:26 PM (59 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

well that and avoid total economic calamity

brb writing dystopian novel re mccain presidency

Chabon or Lethem beating you to it

curses

Chapter 1: McCain Dies, Palin becomes President

dun dun DUN

"I can see Williamsburg from my house!"

taibbi's written about this more cogently elsewhere actually.

― s.clover, Wednesday, September 26, 2012 3:27 PM (29 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

taibbi admits that his source for knowledge on monetary policy is zerohedge

http://trueslant.com/matttaibbi/2010/02/19/on-the-bailout-hustle/

it's not exactly godwin's law but come one, you need to be very leery of anyone who calls himself 'tyler durden' on the internet

ha er 'come on'

Matt Taibbi ‏@mtaibbi

If you or someone you know has had a very bad experience in jail after being convicted of a relatively minor offense, pls write to me
Expand

Reply
Retweet
Favorite

well that and avoid total economic calamity

― lag∞n, Wednesday, September 26, 2012 4:29 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I think we did this discussion elsewhere, like a year ago. but yeah, I don't think QE mattered that much. Never saw any research that showed it moved markets more than a smidge. Ironically, ZH and similar types are the ones who have insisted that it's had the most impact. There's so much money in play at such volumes that QE never amounted to much, huge as it seems. And the end of QE didn't matter that much either, which helps bear this out. Lots more money than QE was doled out at the peak of the crisis in much more direct ways too, remember. And rates were hitting zero regardless, so...

http://ftalphaville.ft.com/blog/2012/07/24/1094601/the-academics-on-qe-for-now/

my reading of that post tends to support my point, but you know, who cares.

otm

Fact schmacts.

it's not exactly godwin's law but come one, you need to be very leery of anyone who calls himself 'tyler durden' on the internet

― goole, Wednesday, September 26, 2012 5:00 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

there are multiple posters who call themselves tyler durden on that site lol

they all do, it's their thing

what if there are multiple Ezra kleins

all this debate abt a RS journalist while Madonna endorsing Obama as a Muslim goes unobserved; you people.

I didn't know Madonna was a muslim.

I'm glad Madonna explained herself to the Washington Post today. Otherwise millions of undecided voters who base their views on Madonna's onstage comments would have been confused. I am sure Taibbi will find a way to work this in.

Madonna in concert:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YIq5Q15L1o

Otherwise millions of undecided voters who base their views on Madonna's onstage comments would have been confused.

Are you familiar with the Human Rights Campaign?

^^ I laughed

haha

"Undecided" aside, well played.

it's true, bitches who give money to that sinkhole are only undecided about what belt to wear to brunch.

That and whether they feel comfortable admitting they have a thing for Rep. Aaron Schock.

Morbs, I was kidding, as was Madonna

"sinkhole"

*hanky panky*

idt matt taibbi's sense of humour is that different from like, dan perry's, or whiney's even, i guess a bit more macho but it's got the same basic structure ito, like, these enraged long incongruous expletive laden analogies

Comments here are comedy gold:http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/rewrite-thomas-friedmans-syria-column-win-a-free-hand-grenade-20121114

this is hilarious http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/no-evidence-he-was-stoned-but-bank-of-america-ceo-brian-moynihan-apparently-doesn-t-remember-much-of-the-last-four-years-20121127

"a Being There-esque cipher who was placed in charge of a Too-Big-To-Fail global banking giant by some kind of historical accident beyond his control, and appears to know little to nothing at all about the business he is running." <-- A+

So I guess Matt Taibbi has never read a deposition transcript before?

Because in my experience, it's generally true that if you remember the financial crisis, you weren't there.

"attorney Peter Calamari"

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/outrageous-hsbc-settlement-proves-the-drug-war-is-a-joke-20121213

for some reason every time this thread gets revived i expect it to be a report that taibbi died, possibly by his own hand or "death by misfortune."

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/secret-and-lies-of-the-bailout-20130104#ixzz2HQDiw8gU

Haven't read this yet. Am guessing it's standard Taibbi.

another narrative about how everything has been utterly fucked up by ugly shitbrain poopyheads, yes

More grist for the mill: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-vampire-squid-strikes-again-the-mega-banks-most-devious-scam-yet-20140212?print=true

Choice bits:

The JPMorgan deal seemed to be in direct violation of an order sent to the bank by the Fed in 2005, which declared the bank was not authorized to "own, operate, or invest in facilities for the extraction, transportation, storage, or distribution of commodities." The way the Fed later explained this to the Senate was that the purchase of Henry Bath was OK because it considered the acquisition of this commodities company kosher within the context of a larger sale that the Fed was cool with – "If the bulk of the acquisition is a permissible activity, they're allowed to include a small amount of impermissible activities."

...

Meanwhile, Chase's own head of commodities operations, Blythe Masters – an even more famed Wall Street figure, sometimes described as the inventor of the credit default swap – admitted that her company's warehouse interests weren't just a casual thing. "Just being able to trade financial commodities is a serious limitation because financial commodities represent only a tiny fraction of the reality of the real commodity exposure picture," she said in 2010.

Loosely translated, Masters was saying that there was a limited amount of money to be made simply trading commodities in the traditional legal manner. The solution? "We need to be active in the underlying physical commodity markets," she said, "in order to understand and make prices."

We need to make prices. The head of Chase's commodities division actually said this, out loud, and it speaks to both the general unlikelihood of God's existence and the consistently low level of competence of America's regulators that she was not immediately zapped between the eyebrows with a thunderbolt upon doing so. Instead, the government sat by and watched as a curious phenomenon developed at all of these new bank-owned warehouses, in the aluminum markets in particular.

So fucking maddening...

blythe masters is such a great romance novel name

i had to stop reading that article, it was too depressing

I know. And now the banks can just argue that the cat's out of the bag, and trying to unwind them from these businesses would pop the bubble, etc. Wow, that was Friedman-level mixed metaphoring. But you know what I mean.

yeah this was hard to read

I kind of want to read something on the subject that isn't by Matt Taibbi.

There was a big thing on alphaville re: it

link?

the thing discussing the taibbi article is on the main page, but you need to register. It was kind of stupid I thought. "Blah blah free markets blah"

http://ftalphaville.ft.com/2014/02/14/1771522/information-asymmetry-bad-incentives-and-taibbi/

Yeah, chock full of free markets happy-talk, while conveniently ignoring the amount of governmental bailouts, etc. that Goldman has received.

It reads like some kind of pro forma response that could be about any corporate or financial scandal. It barely even addresses the actual issues here other than to say "Well it's not ILLEGAL." Duh shit.

I also find it weird how free market dogma harps so much on "information" -- everything is based on this concept that the markets themselves should be "free" but everyone should have enough "information" to make rational choices. I never understood why there's this splitting off of "information" from the rest of the market -- if they really believe in free markets, why have the government even intervene in the information side of the equation? Why not let dominant players use their competitive edges in information too?

the Informed Rational Actor is so fundamental to the whole idea, it's the faith in homo economicus that makes the whole beautiful machine possible, etc.; information has to be a sacrament cuz otherwise it looks like people trying to dominate each other; the free market's most natural mode of communication is advertising, an attempt at control (openly) disguised as a source of information; you know it's a mask but you can't take it off; whatever sorry idk

yeah you're absolutely right about the Informed Rational Actor theory, but it just strikes me that there's this weird fiction/mental contortion free marketers go through where it's ok to intervene in "information" as though "information" were somehow separate from "markets."

Like if you really believe in free markets, why even require SEC filings?

zizek says the keystone of an ideology is whatever its irreconcilable self-contradiction is; where's treeship

"weird fiction/mental contortion" otm

plus the free market is deistic! It doesn't judge the rich and poor -- it allows both to operate on equal terms. If you screw up, it's your fault!

the paradox is like the tension where capitalism colonized enlightenment values

lool at alphaville attributing taibbi's success to the "vampire squid" joke, when that just became a shorthand for the whopper of an article it happened to be the lede for.

otoh even though it makes my head spin, alphaville is one of the only blogs that covers the oddities of the commodity markets in any detail (commodities are fuckin weird) and i think they have a good case that it wasn't actually banks delaying shipments to drive up prices. instead, the problem was that people were willing to pay more for goods delivered later than goods delivered now (contango). in general, the reason for this was the vast influx of speculative cash into commodities funds.

so roughly put, you have people (not banks typically, in fact, though banks might assemble these funds as they do mutual funds, etc) investing in silver or corn or whatever as they would stocks -- you have a fund of futures, and when the futures come to term you roll that over into more futures. that creates contango, because the demand isn't driven for taking delivery on the good, its driven by holding the future for the good. this speculative cash fucks up the commodities market for people who actually want silver or corn or whatever now, at this moment, for some use.

so its the insane market prices driving the warehousing, not manipulating warehousing to create insane market prices.

i sort of buy this explanation.

but on the other other hand i don't think anyone really understands the commodities markets lately, they're just continually weird.

Like if you really believe in free markets, why even require SEC filings?

― Burt Stuntin (Hurting 2), Friday, February 14, 2014 4:09 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Oh believe me, well over a dedade later there are lots of players who would like to see RegFD repealed.

so roughly put, you have people (not banks typically, in fact, though banks might assemble these funds as they do mutual funds, etc) investing in silver or corn or whatever as they would stocks -- you have a fund of futures, and when the futures come to term you roll that over into more futures. that creates contango, because the demand isn't driven for taking delivery on the good, its driven by holding the future for the good. this speculative cash fucks up the commodities market for people who actually want silver or corn or whatever now, at this moment, for some use.

chapter describing this phenomenon was the most interesting part to me of that taibbi book griftopia and yeah i was expecting a lil more of a recap of it here.

yeah that part of the book was eye opening for me too

Oh believe me, well over a dedade later there are lots of players who would like to see RegFD repealed.

― Ian from Etobicoke (Phil D.), Sunday, February 16, 2014 2:52 AM (8 hours ago) Bookmark

You mean the 33/34 acts?

The arguments for getting rid of mandatory disclosure are pretty lol

"Investors will simply choose not to invest in companies that don't disclose key information"

Yeah buddy

idgi, i think rs will always be a perfect + the best venue for him but whatever. good get for greenwald.

Context: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/02/20/matt-taibbi-quits-rolling-stone-joins-glenn-greenwald/

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/10/matt-taibbi-disappears-from-omidyars-first-look.html

Hmm.

has he been publishing anything lately? i haven't been sent (or found) anything by him for a long while...

He was poached to start Racket but it looks like he has either been fired or quit before it launched. There has been a growing level of unease around Omidyar's influence in some circles.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XEmsLlgrZY

Boo.

Although it falls fairly squarely in the 'who cares?' box, this has sparked another fairly ugly spat between Intercept and Pando - with Paul Carr publishing his half of an off-the-record e-mail conversation with Taibbi.

The underlying concern is that left-leaning outlets like Vice, Intercept and the hypothetical Racket are being used as a libertarian trojan horse by oligarchs like Omidyar and Murdoch to hold governments to account but stifle coverage of corporate wrongdoing.

yikes!

the whole exiled/pando vs intercept/greenwald thing is so tedious

yeah i have a hard time keeping any of that shit straight even

can someone explain it all via a math equation?

internet old/hard left types really hate molly crabapple too

https://twitter.com/MarkAmesExiled/status/527456203224649729

i mean, i'm not the biggest fan of her art but you know hmmmmmmm

since when is vice left leaning? Also this CIA conspiracy theory is psychotic

it's really not

I mean I don't know the details but it's not exactly without precedent for the CIA to fund or have clandestine relationships with major media outlets

But yeah as far as "left-leaning" I thought only in the libertarian sense. Socially liberal, against unfree govts or whatever, not a shred of the socialist kind of leftism.

isn't it much much much much more likely that vice is an 'apologist for colonial power' (if it is, whatever) bc of its long known politics and not bc the CIA recruited - of all media outlets - VICE MAGAZINE to spread their propaganda. and to who exactly? brooklyn hipsters?? what a waste of money if true!

also i don't know if you read that full link but i just got up to the point where the author accuses the US of literally (and presumably intentionally, I'm not going to bother reading the Counterpunch lol link it uses as evidence for this claim) arming and financing IS.

The CIA has money to waste. As pointed out, they have a long history of insinuating themselves into the media, including directly funding media outlets, co-opting individual reporters, and planting information and disinformation. They get around.

No, describing Vice as left-leaning was clearly incorrect but there is a sense that a substantial part of the young, politically-aware audience that trusts its news coverage probably skews more to the left than a standard news audience.

For better or for worse Omidyar has documented links to USAID and foreign policy concerns so it's understandable there is reticence about him bankrolling major oppositional news sites, even if it does contradict the narrative that he's using it as a way to limit coverage of corporate wrongdoing and stick it to the state.

Also plenty of allegations flying around that prominent left-leaning journalists have ties to Koch funding, etc. A lot of it seems overblown. I like Ames, Carr is insufferable. The caution about the super rich setting the new media news agenda as well as the old media news agenda seems legit.

i heard the CIA was funding Game Informer and Polygon

I didn't read the Counterpunch link and I rarely put much stock in Counterpunch articles. But Vice isn't some little hipster corner of the indie bookstore's magazine rack anymore, it's huge business.

i know they have an HBO show and they do some good foreign affairs footage as of late imo, but what is the huge business? this is probably just not my world of young ppl i'm imagining bc they seem like smaller than buzzfeed to me.

boo!

however i have faith that ghost rider can still deliver

and srsly doubt that he would be involved if racket was some kind of rightwing trojan horse, come on now

i know they have an HBO show and they do some good foreign affairs footage as of late imo, but what is the huge business? this is probably just not my world of young ppl i'm imagining bc they seem like smaller than buzzfeed to me.

― Mordy, Wednesday, October 29, 2014 2:43 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It's valued at like $2.5 billion and they may do an IPO soon. They're supposed to break $500 million in revenue this year. Rupert Murdoch owns a stake.

Yeah, I'd assume that if the CIA was in the business of influencing news outlets, Vice would be fairly high on the list for the same reason that Murdoch sank $70m into it. Even if it doesn't make any financial sense (and it may not) it's the kind of thing that people think is important in the post-print media landscape, etc.

But all actions we might consider “imperial” are not equal, as Bady argued. When Gadhafi invests in infrastructure in Chad — even though it seems like a dick move to have it bear his name — it is still an anti-imperialist action. When Chávez funds political movements in Bolivia — even though they serve to reinforce his influence on the continent — this is still anti-imperialist action. This is because all of this is done in the face of the biggest imperial force: The West, The Empire. Washington and its closest, most murderous allies such as the UK and France are omnipresent, their roots snaking through the soils and breaking the pavements of almost literally every single country on the face of the earth. The kind of left that equates Russian state funding of RT America with Soros funding of “civil society” organizations in Georgia is not serious about even talking in opposition to the ideology that allows the West to remain astride the world’s peoples.

i admit there was a time in my life that this paragraph would've gotten me really hot

pando is worthless and i occasionally thought nsfwcorp would be less than worthless but it always disappoints

ames has written some first-rate stuff about the history of the nsa and john dolan is consistently great. but i kinda gave up checking back on that site more than once a month because of their obsession with discrediting greenwald and co. feels like a microcosm of the condition of the u.s. left -- two factions who basically agree with each other on almost everything but can't stand each other for reasons so convoluted even regular readers can't understand them. would still take either pando or intercept over counterpunch, which has totally gone off the rails, seems like half the ppl writing for them are militia-nut libertarians.

& pando has Thiel money, is that right? So their position is… 'we take libertarian billionaire money but we're upfront about it, and we're critical of our billionaire sometimes?'

counterpunch still has the most journos i can trust.

ames just seems to overpromise his stunning revelations and rarely pays off, so now i don't feel he's worth the effort.

pando is hardly 'left' in any sense. its a silicon-valley libertarian-leaning insular trade-mag for the startup scene. basically a next gen wall st journal for the sf tech scene.

That Silicon Valley strain of young plutocrats is gonna become its own mini Koch propaganda industry.

Pando hasn't taken any money from Thiel in a while and have said there was always a clear understanding that investment could not buy editorial influence, though they have come down hard on people with more tangential links to billionaires than that.

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/10/30/inside-story-matt-taibbis-departure-first-look-media

^^ what a mess

Yep. It was pretty much sold as a hands-off project for Omidyar at the start but spending a quarter of a billion dollars to let Matt Taibbi write what he wanted never exactly added up.

I applaud the Intercepts transparency about all this, but do wonder if Omidyar won't just pull the plug soon because of all this.

I don't know a lot about the man, but seeing to taxi receipts etc when you injected $ 250 million into a new media company... I don't know. Is he that bored?

who would have guessed that taibbi would be hard to work for, total shock

Here's a relevant blast from the past:

http://observer.com/2000/06/from-russia-with-lust/

letting taibbi write what he wanted is one thing, but -- at least given his public persona -- making him a manager seems like a poor decision by both sides

also, a lede somewhat buried:

These simmering problems came to a head this month when a Racket staffer complained to senior management that Taibbi had been verbally abusive and unprofessionally hostile, and that she felt the conduct may have been motivated, at least in part, by her gender.

No question Taibbi is difficult to work with probably, but the same probably goes for Greenwald and more Intercepters. What I find remarkable is that they use Taibbi's departure to openly criticize Omidyar, and they're not trying to do it subtly either.

I have to say that as much as I love Taibbi's writing, it would not surprise me at all to discover the complaint had merit.

XXp that is indeed somewhat buried

Wonder if Jay Rosen jumped ship at First Look because of this too. He left a couple of weeks ago, supposedly because there was "nothing to do" for him.

The Intercept piece is positioning it as a dispute over corporate culture rather than a far more damaging issue of editorial interference.

well sure but what it doesn't say is that the colleagues that matt was abusing were CIA plants

just skipped to p4reene's endnote

the strange death of liberal bloggers

On a Saturday night in May, Mark Ames and Matt Taibbi were drinking Pepsi and smoking American Spirits in a one-bedroom apartment in a high-rise near Times Square. They took turns leaning over a plastic compact disc case, snorting lines of speed.

i enjoy reading taibbi but no fucking way would i enjoy working with much less for him

can't tell if this was a d-bag move by Greenwald et. al. putting out all this stuff about Taibbi and making themselves look like the reasonable good kids, or that they knew First Look would leak the accusations against Taibbi and wanted to get in first with a more accurate version of events.

There's going to be an NY Mag 'expose' over the weekend, aiui, and this is getting their side of the story out first.

well hey this has kept taibbi and pareene quiet in the run-up to the 2014 midterms -- good show, pierre!

cld tell this thing was gonna be a shit show by how they were calling it a "digital magazine"

A "digital magazine" sounds like a place you'd go to read articles about Atari Teenage Riot

amazing how lingo tells you guys everything you need to know

sorta like "Hope" i guess

wld hope so

now you reminded me of hope partlow!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9qBziX7ugc

@pareene
A person had an issue with Matt. That person is in no way responsible for this outcome. Competent management would've resolved it easily.

@pareene
Finally, I want to make one thing clear: Actually this is about ethics in games journalism

curious how taibbi/pareene are going to cover the republican congress

with a fire blanket

sounds to me like First Look decided to put all their eggs in the Intercept basket and found some reasons to push Taibbi out

burning hot take

oh thanks! where can I pick up my ILE Pulitzer?

just click the flag post link next to yr name

My name is not Permalink

wow rude

with a fire blanket

and bucket of water hopefully

and . . . he's back!

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/oct/31/matt-taibbi-rolling-stone-first-look-media

http://racketteen.tumblr.com

Vanity Fair's Sarah Ellison:

Confirmed. @johnjcook leaving @intercept to return to @Gawker. Please DM or email me any news or tips.

huh wow this shit goin down in flame

oof going back to gawker. situation must be real bad.

gawker traded max to first look for cook. max is going to be greenwald's handler now.

responsibilities: walk dogs, find/invent blogging software that limits the number/length of updates

...shop for flip-flops and cargo shorts

lol xp

Seriously though, wondering if the exodus at Intercept will come to an end or if this is only the beginning

this is the first defection from the intercept iirc, taibbi was the racket, both under first look media, not to be pedantic just its interesting because it was thought that everything was cool at the intercept

...but maybe not?

http://racketteen.tumblr.com

― lag∞n, Tuesday, November 11, 2014 6:08 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

most interesting thing to me is that the remaining staff of the racket have set up a joke tumblr

that story on taibbi defection bylined by all the intercept people seemed pretty much like they were putting first look on notice to me

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/10/30/inside-story-matt-taibbis-departure-first-look-media/

sure it also said tho

“First Look executives, who by and large come from a highly structured Silicon Valley corporate environment, and the fiercely independent journalists who view corporate cultures and management-speak with disdain.” The Intercept, the story said, “was able to resolve most of these conflicts.”

its funny cause sillicon valley generally has less structured corporate environments that most corporations prob less than say big newspapers like the new york times but more than say ur average big time blog like gawker, prob its more a case of the style of the corporate environment than the amount, or more likely even had mostly to do w a billionaire w no industry experience trying to run this shit part time and remote using stuff that works when ur trying to make software

btw dear ebay guy u seem nice and misunderstood i will run ur media properties 4 u if u want ps i dont do meetings tho

No it's good you're pointed that out lagoon. Yet what Brio is saying seems otm abt putting first look on notice

ya i agree

greenwald and taibbi both seem like they wld be mighty unchill to work with too fwiw

like maybe he shdve hired editors to run the sites

lots of things "seem" to guys just chillin on the interwebs, i notice

wow morbs

its p perfect when u think abt how libertarian ebay billionaire thinks the purest future of journalism is two wildly self righteous guys who cant stop typing shd run his "digital magazines"

he should have just given them wordpress accounts and credit cards

lol morbs

wonder why first look wanted to be so hands on, shoulda just hired them a shitload of lawyers and let em loose

http://33.media.tumblr.com/f6496dd181498385bf1583a32cba0b0c/tumblr_ney0baNtPD1u3tccwo1_1280.png

oh so Greenwald gets the poodles

is that a cum shot splatter to his left

a fair amount of dog content in Citizenfour btw, Alfred

I have had legit crushes on at least two of those ppl.

I'm not sure I'm over Scahill actually.

met Scahill at the Book Fair last year. Rowr.

Watching him obsessively and irritably hit an ecig during a 1-1/2 hour discussion panel made me feel like, okay bro I get you now. You are this anxious just all the time. Go. Go do something. Stop fidgeting.

papaziti ‏@papaziti 15m15 minutes ago
@ggreenwald Hope he doesn't burn any bridges as Gawker may be going the way of the DoDo. #GamerGate

Retired Lothario. Dog whisperer. Patron of the arts. Leisure Consultant. Grandfather. http://youtube.com/user/papaziti

lmao

Catt Taibby

wonder why first look wanted to be so hands on, shoulda just hired them a shitload of lawyers and let em loose

― Brio2, Thursday, November 13, 2014 10:56 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

p clearly a large element of disrupting journalism aspiration here with the typical result when an extremely successful person with deep knowledge of their industry thinks their shit will just carry over no prob ie guy prob thinks the key to new journalism is grafting startup management techniques onto teams of reporters

realize that quesh was not entirely srs but i have important observations to share

so much shit to disrupt, so little time

the whole thing would make a great mike judge movie

i've managed to avoid it for however many weeks it's been a "thing" (mostly b/c i skim past anything related to computer games), but can someone explain "gamergate" to me in 40 words or less?

its about ethics in game journalism

lol

some dudes fled the tyranny of women and sex and found a safe haven but women and sex are encroaching on their territory and they have decided to fight back

wait taibbi was involved?

that's where he's been this whole time.

some dudes fled the tyranny of women and sex and found a safe haven but women and sex are encroaching on their territory and they have decided to fight back

― Roberto Spiralli,

I didn't have a clue that ship felt this way!

real lotharios never retire.......

https://gs1.wac.edgecastcdn.net/8019B6/data.tumblr.com/0494a1118df90f0830a8e8c6c0e73820/tumblr_nexx40d3pI1u3tccwo1_500.gif

lolmg

lol

some dudes -- me plus another guy

so i would pay money for a subscription to a daily hot takes board

http://racketteen.tumblr.com/post/102968234254/hot-takes-board-11-18-14

Honestly, I'm pretty happy that they are getting paid to do Racket Teen. They deserve to make money from it.

welp http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/media/2014/11/8557378/first-look-media-ends-racket-project-fires-staff

welp yeah that sucks

http://racketteen.tumblr.com/post/103560723094/but-you-know-that-our-hearts-will-go-blah

RIP I guess, I never knew you

rip our last best hope for independent teen opinion journalism

I skimmed it for a few mins it just looks like another hipster runoff blog to me all this shit is the same lol I am old

it was a parody of same done by ppl waiting to get fired, no?

oh, lol sorry I think I missed half the story here

yeah, Matt Taibbi didn't recruit those folx to do Racket Teen. I think they were supposed to make the NSA implode, more like.

it was perhaps the nicest, most meta bit of journo-narcissism i've seen in a long time.

it was fun how u cld tell they were just hanging around drinking waiting to be fired

tbh anytime i read about racket the vision seemed really muddy and unclear to me, like they weren't even sure what it was supposed to be, so i can't say i'm shocked that it didn't really work out

i'm happy that pareene has been liberated though, assuming someone snaps him up quickly. he's one of the best politics writers, it sucked not hearing from him for half a year or whatever.

except for when he filled in for andrew sullivan lol

http://www.wired.com/2014/12/life-and-death-of-the-racket/

“The whole site is a reaction to the clickbait, robotic, aggregating direction to journalism that’s the direction everything’s going on the Internet. We want readers to feel like everything they see on the site was the creation of an individual human being,” said Taibbi. A big part of that was going to be an emphasis on voice. The Racket was going to reject the dry, third-person style of the traditional media for strongly opinionated writing that, rather attempting to hide its biases, would flaunt them. It would be a way to connect with the audience and even drive its own reporting.

Man, this site would have been pretty fun, at least.

The Intercept is actually really good though. The dry third person style of traditional media is being avoided every day.

wanna read those outsourced tom friedman columns

yeah i'm kinda gutted now tbh. friedman gag so otm.

not sure where on the internet to turn for my strongly voiced opinon writing that, rather attempting to hide its biases, would flaunt them now

so you're saying... pareene was a mole and denton blew them up from the inside

its all connected

there were some very funny ideas in that piece and i def wldve liked to see what racket cld do cause they had some cool ppl on staff even if reading two consecutive matt taibbi sentences is painful for me, but having voice and being opinionated and hating clickbait are not really anything that sets you apart from a lot of people on the net

tho they did seem like they were prepared to ratchet up the obnoxiousness to rarified heights lol buying franklin foer twitter follower

tho im not sure if any of those funny ideas wldve been good for anything past the initial joke

its really too bad they didnt just give it to pareene and edith zimmerman after taibbi left that wldve been the best possible outcome

tbh i would give them all my lunch money to just troll friedman, brooks, and dowd every week

wld be cool to be all we are launching this exciting new journalism project that will have high quality content and also be sort of prankish but then its 100% pranks

i will crowdfund u

cool ty

glad to see some good come of all this

amen

“We also have an idea we’re calling Apartment 538, a Facebook community of people who look like Nate Silver, and we’re just going to poll them on things,” said Taibbi. “Instead of having a Nate Silver-produced poll we’re just going to poll 87 people who look like Nate Silver.”

Jesus, I wish this had happened.

More Racket / Intercept fallout:

http://jimromenesko.com/2015/02/22/ken-silverstein-resigns-from-pierre-omidyars-first-look-media-blasts-dishonest-leadership/

So now NVC & KS have both left after having pt.2 of their Serial interview held back for a week

lol I was hoping never to think about that Serial thing again

the guy omidyar like why did he even want to do this

Investigative reporter Ken Silverstein has resigned from First Look Media’s The Intercept after 14 months, saying he and others were hired “under what were essentially false pretenses [by being] told we would be given all the financial and other support we needed to do independent, important journalism, but instead found ourselves blocked at every step of the way by management’s incompetence and bad faith.”

independent, important journalism = pt.2 of a Serial interview?

xp spectacular conceit. just a guess tho.

i mean cry me a river about 19th-rate-hunter-thompson-misogynist-half-smart-at-best-brodude poor beleaguered paragon of integrity matt taibbi being forced out of any job, but damn this sounds like a shit place to work

something potentially beneficial about this kerfuffle is that, after "accidentally" sitting out the 2014 midterms, say taibbi and pareene have platforms in time, they might come out guns blazing at bush the younger and/or "not that" scott walker or whoever the GOP ticket is. not to be partisan

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/why-baltimore-blew-up-20150526

This is a good (and maddening) summary of the attempts to try and figure out what happened on the Garner grand jury:

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/a-year-later-the-eric-garner-grand-jury-decision-still-stings-20151203

ON TRUMP:

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/how-america-made-donald-trump-unstoppable-20160224

Long article, worth reading if you like feeling a creeping horror and bile rising in your throat.

there are some good grafs in there but was it edited? by anyone? it reads at times like someone cut all the grafs out and shook them up in a hat and started laying them down one after the other at random.

I had to skim it. Tracer OTM, it gets close to free association at points. Possibly from listening to too much Trump.

The number of predictable "he's got a real shot at this you guys" pieces between now and September is going to get really mind-numbing

gonzo writing sort of falls down when everyone already gets how nutty everything is.

on how the NYT gutted their 'positive' Sanders profile online

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/how-the-new-york-times-sandbagged-bernie-sanders-20160315?page=2

interesting

it's about time someone with (successful parents) a voice spelled it out ~

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/trump-isnt-the-campaign-medias-first-mistake-20160519?page=3

i think he gives the media too much credit. it's not like they were tricking americans into voting for these plutocrats. america elected reagan twice and liked it so much they elected his vp too. donald trump is a strange aberration and taibbi's "you should've seen it all along" is v self-congratulatory. now it makes sense to me that ppl should vote in their self-interest, but they didn't do that for so long that thomas frank wrote an entire book on the topic. taibbi understands the self-interest part but he has no explanation for why now.

whenever i read this guy's name all i can think of is how fucked up and misogynistic the eXile was

i don't think he's giving the media credit so much as admitting their class bias is so steep few up top can see what's going on down below where the majority of america (without successful parents) scrambles to survive: "The tone of American political coverage for some time hasn't matched the reality of what voters have been going through. Even as America lost its manufacturing base and tens of millions of people were put out of good jobs, the campaign story for years remained the same weirdly celebratory soap opera." it's not the media who sets reagan, bush, bush, romney, and trump up to run; the (increasingly privileged) media is too class-blind to point out the plutocratic BS is his thesis i think

xpost

whenever i read this guy's name all i can think of is how fucked up and misogynistic the eXile was

I think the dude grew up, it happens sometimes.

i'm not saying it should be held against him, really. i just have a hard time looking past it personally. it's not like he was sixteen years old in those days he was like, the age i am now.

i also realize mark ames was worse than taibbi

It's almost like he's a lurker

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/democrats-will-learn-all-the-wrong-lessons-from-brush-with-bernie-20160609

except regular posters here don't want to hear that i'd bet

or know it already

hi matt!

taibbi is mostly right, but i suspect most of us would agree with him. but i don't think that what taibbi predicts is a foregone conclusion.

it seems like morbs is wearing some kind of weird anamorphic lenses when he reads ILX that cause him to make sweeping generalizations about our opinions that aren't remotely true. of his many odious traits, that's the most confounding and frustrating. i don't have any real explanation for it other than he must get off on feeling superior, so it serves his interests to project straw men onto those he's talking (or "talking") with.

and FWIW i do worry that trump's obvious odiousness, and the likely fact that hillary will win this thing in a (relative) rout, means that people will be a celebratory mood and won't hold her feet to the fire before or after the election. she'll interpret her major victory not just as the defeat of fascism but as a endorsement of her kind of corporatist incrementalism.

now, let's watch as morbs continues to condemn the lot of us as sniveling hillarybots.

feel like the lesson the democratic party hasn't learnt yet is how to get all yr constituents to go out to town halls over the summer and threaten to primary / vote out their congressmen if they refuse to pass the legislation that they want, or how to get them to come out in midterms to show that there's teeth behind that threat.

taibbi's point seems to be smugness above inhibits the rank and file. how to "ameliorate" that is a burning question

now, let's watch as morbs continues to condemn the lot of us as sniveling hillarybots.

― wizzz! (amateurist), Friday, June 10, 2016 5:46 PM (17 minutes ago)

you know, you could do better not to bait him with every other post of yours

maybe he could, maybe he couldn't. hard to say.

yeah, i should just ignore it. it's hard when every third post in these political threads is him baiting the lot of us.

i shouldn't 'speak' for him but i think he's calling bullshit on self-styled enlightened egalitarians, not baiting people for the hell of it. sorry dr-m if i am misrepresenting you

i'm not speaking, so go ahead.

OTMx1000:

The maddening thing about the Democrats is that they refuse to see how easy they could have it. If the party threw its weight behind a truly populist platform, if it stood behind unions and prosecuted Wall Street criminals and stopped taking giant gobs of cash from every crooked transnational bank and job-exporting manufacturer in the world, they would win every election season in a landslide.

yep

no morbs but... they appoint Wall Street criminals to cabinet posts.. so not gonna happen

(sorry morbs)

no, because those interests bankroll the really fuckin' weird tv ads that speak to identity politics that motivate a fair number of voters

If the party threw its weight behind a truly populist platform, if it stood behind unions and prosecuted Wall Street criminals and stopped taking giant gobs of cash from every crooked transnational bank and job-exporting manufacturer in the world

It's probably apocryphal, but there is a 'quote' out there along these lines: "I don't care who votes, so long as I choose the candidates." -- Boss Tweed --

The quote may be phony as a $3 bill, but the sentiment is correct enough and the rich and powerful endorse it through their actions in every election.

drag out the evil lesserism

The Democratic Party leaders have trained their followers to perceive everything in terms of one single end-game equation: If you don't support us, you're supporting Bush/Rove/Cheney/Palin/Insert Evil Republican Here.

That the monster of the moment, Donald Trump, is a lot more monstrous than usual will likely make this argument an even bigger part of the Democratic Party platform going forward....

Dissenting voices like this year's version of Nader, Bernie Sanders, are inevitably pitched as quixotic egotists who don't have the guts to do what it takes to win. They're described as just out for 15 minutes of fame, and maybe a few plaudits from teenagers and hippies who'll gush over their far-out idealism.

But that characterization isn't accurate. The primary difference between the Nader/Sanders platform and the Gore/Clinton platform isn't rooted in ideology at all, but money.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/ralph-nader-bernie-sanders-lesser-evilism-20160620

It's a sound formula for making ballot-box decisions, but the people who push it never seem content to just use it to win elections. They're continually trying to make an ethical argument out of it, to prove people who defy The Equation are, whether they know it or not, morally wrong and in league with the other side. Beltway Democrats seem increasingly to believe that all people who fall within a certain broad range of liberal-ish beliefs owe their votes and their loyalty to the Democratic Party. That's why, as a socially liberal person who probably likes trees and wouldn't want to see Roe v. Wade overturned, Nader's decision to take votes from the party-blessed candidate Gore is viewed not as dissent, but as a kind of treason.

insane the amount of strawmanning here. no one is immoral or evil for voting for nader / jill stein. they're just dumb and make poor strategic decisions. and no one thinks they're treasonous. just dumb.

Once you get to the point where there is a general election for president your options for effective action for positive change have narrowed to whoever is on the ballot and has enough organization and support to win. Voting for someone who has no chance to win will not be an effective action for positive change.

If progressives are serious about changing the system, they must begin by organizing, raising money, identifying a candidate and what their winning issues are long before the first primary is held. It's pretty late in the day to do anything more than vote for a candidate who is on the ballot, preferably one who can win.

i don't disagree

and i stopped believing the Dems can be "changed from within" a long time ago

reminder from that great recent lemeiux post:

It is also worth noting that this is not an ideological dispute; it is not about FAILING TO RECOGNIZE THAT THERE ARE PEOPLE TO YOUR LEFT. Noam Chomsky believes that swing-state voters should support the leftmost viable candidate in general elections; Tom Friedman, conversely, shares Freddie’s view that there really needs to be a third-party candidate that agrees with him in every detail because coalition-building should be obsolete for today’s consumer.

has nothing to do w/ evil, or dissent, or the left. it has to do w/ childish atomistic consumerism replacing pragmatism. "lesser evilism" is the telling phrase. the so-called democratic liberals don't use the idiom when making their argument bc they aren't making an argument based in morality. it's the priority of a stunted morality that sees voting as an expression of their personal purity and views compromise as somehow contaminating said purity. don't vote for the lesser evil. vote for the option that best fits your issues. if one candidate fits 20% and the other fits 10%, vote for the 20% one. if both fit 0% (like let's say you're a one issue capitalism voter and the options this year are fascism and communism, or more practically if you're a one issue hardcore anti-imperialism voter and your options are interventionism and belligerence, and neither seem superior to the other) then don't vote. no one is asking anyone to vote for a candidate who they don't agree with on any issue. they're just saying that if you agree with one politician more than another, the only intelligent decision is to vote for the one you agree with more. the whole purity in politics thing is bizarre.

re treason, Taibbi is talking about the snotty, punchable attitude of DLC types, funny i can't think of an example just now.

taibbi feels bad about himself and he's projecting all kinds of /attitudes/ to DLC types that aren't being made. no one said anyone /owes/ Hillary their votes. what they said was that only stupid people don't vote for the best of the two candidates. it's the left-wing political fluoride hysterics (and their related versions throughout the political spectrum including tom friedman self-obsessed voters) who believe anyone is making a case about treason or evil or whatever. he admits himself that voting for the better candidate is a good way to make a decision at the ballot box. he can't quite bring himself to admit that it's the only logical way to make a decision but even he realizes that he's complaining about the demons in his head and not actually people.

MaxSpeak had a pretty great run on LGM front page the other day. One of about eight posts of his - http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2016/06/confessions-of-a-bernie-bro

Some on the left seem to make it their mission to invite the contempt of others. I’m always reminded of an appearance by the late Harvey Pekar on David Letterman’s show, decades ago. Pekar’s message could be boiled down to, I’m the left, and you all suck. Ah, politics. Winning friends and influencing people! His hatred was pure! Some on the left fall prey to this, if only occasionally.