Open Thread and Some Things of Marginal Importance

Some stuff, a lot of it from Twitter, where the real stupid happens:

A Blue Checkmark Mafia idiot says the GOP rigged Benghazi to hurt Hillary Clinton in the election.

Louise Mensch, who is so good at politics she successfully served as a Member of Parliament from 2010 all the way until her resignation in 2012, spends her days now nuttering about reds under the beds. Even Buzzfeed, which has led many Social Justice Warrior scalp-hunting parties against innocent nobodies, thinks she's a bit promiscuous with her many, many allegations.

Since last November’s election, the former British politician Louise Mensch has transformed herself into the leader of a wide-ranging internet investigation into Russian espionage and influence in American politics, media, and business. Every day, Mensch and her network of online detectives unravel what they claim is a massive conspiracy linking the Kremlin, the Republican party, armies of internet trolls, and moneyed puppet-masters around the world.

Mensch, who sometimes tweets hundreds of times a day, has claimed or implied that targets ranging from top government officials to journalists to teenagers to anonymous twitter users are in thrall to Vladimir Putin.

Just since inauguration day, according to an extensive review of her tweets, the New York-based Mensch has accused at least 210 people and organizations of being under Russian government influence....

Mensch’s list includes 35 American politicians and government officials, 26 journalists, 26 organizations and corporations (among them think tanks, banks, media outlets, foreign intelligence agencies, and security firms), 18 Russians, 18 US citizens notable for political donations or affiliations, 80 low-profile Twitter accounts Mensch has characterized as "Putinbots" or similar (many of which appear to belong to Americans who support President Trump), and two British politicians. The list includes figures as disparate as Bernie Sanders and Sean Hannity.

Via @EsotericCD.

By the way, if you wish to learn more about the mindthoughts of this former chic-lit-writer-turned-spyhunter, you can read her brilliant essay "Dear Mr. Putin, Let's Play Chess."

Are the elites once again whistling past the graveyard in declaring confidently that LePen can't win in France?

BTW, I think the answer is "no," because just a couple of years ago people thought the FN was going to capture a lot of regional offices because they made it into the second round, but the partisans of all other parties ganged up to vote for whoever was opposing the FN candidate. So you had the center-left voters voting for the Parti Socialist, and socialists voting for the center left -- anyone but FN.

That just happened two years ago and I don't see how things could have changed so tectonically since then that this pattern would no longer be operative.

Then again, there was just a terrorist attack, and she's kind of the only one making a big deal about it, and the Known Wolf who'd done it had previously gone on anti-cop rampages but was still at large, so who knows.

Oh, and one likely second-round opponent Jean-Luc Melenchon, wants a 100% tax on "the rich" -- so maybe even the center-right will shy away from backing him, if he makes the second round.

See update to this story: Berkeley now says it will provide protection for an Ann Coulter speech, thought it will be delayed a week.

Some groundbreaking work from out academic elites in the exciting new field of pre-natal micro-aggressions:

Oh, and Maddow Gonna Maddow:

Night!

posted by Ace at 07:52 PM

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