Kurt Reichenwald: I Want Republicans to Lose Their Insurance and Die

This was over the weekend, but whatever, I post a lot of Things Which are Old.

Senior Newsweek writer Kurt [R]eichenwald wants innocent people to suffer and die in order to prove a point.

[R]eichenwald said on Twitter Friday night that he hopes every Republican who voted in favor of the American Health Care Act on Thursday sees a family member come down with a serious "long term" illness and lose their insurance before dying. When challenged, [R]eichenwald doubled down. "I want them to be tortured," he said of Republicans who supported the AHCA. He added: "I want the [Republicans] who supported this to feel the pain in their own families."

More elminationist rhetoric from the Party of Love and Empathy and Reason and #Science.

So much #Science!

Reichenwald claims to have a type of epilepsy so severe that even viewing a gif of a strobe light on a screen causes him seizures, and yet did not previously disable gifs on Twitter, and seems to spend an inordinate amount of time on Twitter. Per his claims, he also apparently is unable to look away from what is clearly a strobe gif within a brief period of time, but instead is compelled to gaze deeply into it until he gets a seizure and then has his "wife" tweet about it.

Then he gets the police to arrest people.

He also has a shabby history of paying a source. He also makes vague threats about people he knows in the intel community who could go after people who make a simple mistake in an article:

This kind of vaguely ominous language continues, and is a theme of Eichenwald's correspondence: "There are some things I know but I can't tell you, but what I will say is that, as far as American intelligence agencies are concerned, the event involving this manipulated document is far from over."

...

The two work out a time to speak on the phone, a conversation which eventually takes place, lasting just over an hour. In Moran’s notes on the call, he quotes Eichenwald as repeating that the “intelligence community” was monitoring both Sputnik and a separate Twitter account, which he holds responsible for the blowback (as opposed to his own story). He went on to say that everyone at Sputnik had an intelligence file on them, and asked if Moran had made any foreign phone calls that might have raised eyebrows. He went on to imply that Moran might have issues getting a re-entry visa into America if he ever traveled abroad, and then offered to help Moran "find a real job" to extricate him from the situation. He went on to say that both Sputnik and Russia Today have been targeted by the intelligence community, and will soon be subject to sanctions that aim at shutting them down for good.

By the way, the error in question was pretty minor: a leaked Sidney Blumenthal email contained a passage stating that because Hillary Clinton was in fact in charge of security for State Department officials, questions about Benghazi were "legitimate."

But Blumenthal was passing this quote along -- the quote came from a Reichenwald article. The Sputnik reporter missed that Blumenthal was quoting someone, not offering Blumenthal's own thoughts, and claimed Blumenthal said that inquiries into Benghazi were "legitimate."

Pretty minor error.

Even if you don't assume it was an error -- even if you think the guy deliberately misconstrued the email in order to get a clickbaitier #FalsifiedNews story -- it's pretty minor as far as those things go (Blumenthal was passing this on to Hillary, after all -- like he thought this itself was a fair point that needed to be responded to.)

And this of course is no kind of attack on Reichenwald -- Reichenwald isn't defending himself in this matter, but Blumenthal and Clinton. The fact that his quote was the one that got mistaken for Blumenthal's thoughts casts no aspersions on Reichenwald. (Indeed, the quote in question is sensible enough, if obvious as hell, which would make one question if Reichenwald was even capable of admitting something against partisan interest like that.)

Yet he reacts like an intensely angry partisan who's very quick to bring up the specter of Official Inquiries and retribution from the intelligence community to shut someone up.

Reichenwald seems to enjoy siccing the police and his intelligence agency friends on people he has online spats with, but I'm sure he'll tell you that what alarms him most about Trump is his authoritarian streak merged with pettiness and narcissism.

Also, he looks like a thumb that's aging poorly.

Given that this is a post about Things That Are Old, like Kurt Reichenwald, I thought I'd mention other things that are Old, because they're in the same vein.

Despite Reichenwald being apparently crazed on the point of Russian Hacking of the Election, it is important to note that no less an authority than Dianne Feinstein -- who's seen the evidence, both public and classified, and who is a partisan opposed to Trump -- says there's no evidence "at this time" to suggest that anyone in the Trump campaign colluded with Russia.

"I know that you and some of your colleagues from the Senate Intelligence Committee drove over to Langley, Virginia yesterday to CIA headquarters and you were briefed," CNN host Wolf Blitzer said. He continued, "You don't have to provide us with any classified information, Senator, but do you believe, do you have evidence that there was in fact collusion between Trump associates and Russia during the campaign?"

"Not at this time," Feinstein replied.

No word yet as to whether any of Reichenwald's pals in the Intelligence Community have files thick with treason on Dianne Feinstein.

We've heard almost nothing from the media for six months about "Russian ties" to the Trump campaign, and yet, even after six months, there's still no evidence at all?

See the second half of Sexton's article (the last link) to see an Intercept story noting that for a six week period between February and March, the Rachel Maddow show consisted 53% of segments primarily about the White Whale of Trump's connections to Russia -- and that figure understates how Russia-focused the show is, because they didn't count segments in which Russia was discussed but was not the "overarching" topic of the segment.

Fifty three percent -- plus all the other times she mentioned it or asked about it or did her weird cashew-face smirk about a reference to it.

Here's just a short, very incomplete mash-up of Maddow's constant Reds Under Our Beds paranoia.

posted by Ace at 02:18 PM

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