February 27, 2024

"I often found myself asking questions like 'Doesn’t all of this talk of "voter suppression": on the left sound similar to charges of "voter fraud" on the right?' only to realize..."

".... how unwelcome such questions were. By asking, I’d revealed that I wasn’t on the same team as my colleagues, that I didn’t accept as an article of faith the liberal premise that voter suppression was a grave threat to liberal democracy while voter fraud was entirely fake news. Or take the Hunter Biden laptop story: Was it truly 'unsubstantiated,' as the paper kept saying? At the time, it had been substantiated, however unusually, by Rudy Giuliani. Many of my colleagues were clearly worried that lending credence to the laptop story could hurt the electoral prospects of Joe Biden and the Democrats. But starting from a place of party politics and assessing how a particular story could affect an election isn’t journalism. Nor is a vague unease with difficult subjects. 'The state of Israel makes me very uncomfortable,' a colleague once told me. This was something I was used to hearing from young progressives on college campuses, but not at work...."

Writes Adam Rubenstein, in "I Was a Heretic at The New York Times/I did what I was hired to do, and I paid for it" (The Atlantic).

Rubenstein was the primary editor of the Tom Cotton op-ed that caused an uproar in 2020. This long article is mostly about that experience, which, he says, "was never about safety, or the facts, or the editing, or even the argument, but control of the paper and who had it."

59 comments:

Gusty Winds said...

Doesn't it seem clear the CIA has control of the NYTs?

Gusty Winds said...

There is no voter suppression. Asking for ID or validating information on an absentee ballot is simply reasonable.

The ONLY reason to oppose such measures is for voter fraud implementation.

Only a moron or someone who supports the voter fraud refuses to admit this.

wild chicken said...

its the same on the right. I worked in elections and tried to allay their suspicions, we even formed committees to go talk to the election admin, only to hear the same old tired complaints later.

They "know" there's something fishy going on by god, and somebody should oughtta look into it!

RideSpaceMountain said...

To the far-left, the truth is but a lie undiscovered. All must be on board, like witches in a circle chanting at the coven, lest the smallest kernel of doubt fail to conjure the dark one.

They really believe that universal consensus can make something ontologically true, that if everyone believes it hard enough it becomes real. 2 + 2 can equal 5.

Lysenkoism never died.

rhhardin said...

The American Experiment was letting women vote. Now you only have to convince women to swing votes to anything at all, and the means is what writers are good at: soap opera.

This story itself is soap opera. Always ask: what do they want women to think about.

Gusty Winds said...

This gets even dumber. Rubenstein says he was shamed by his NYTs collogues because he said he like Chick-fil-A.

A few years ago I was taking this woman down to Summerfest. On the way, I pulled into the Chick-fil-A on Capitol Drive and 124th Street. She says, "You're really stopping at HATE chicken?" I knew then she was a nutty liberal and I just had to make it through the day.

This particular location is on the border of Milwaukee and Waukesha County. When we went in, it was packed with BLACK PEOPLE from the west side of Milwaukee. So I said to her, all these black people don't seem to think it's HATE chicken, and I'd imagine their Democrats.

It's just a damn good sandwich.

lonejustice said...

"But starting from a place of party politics and assessing how a particular story could affect an election isn’t journalism."

True. And both sides do it all the time. The left just has more "journalists" and "news" outlets.

Shouting Thomas said...

The rationale for the Ukraine war collapsed two days ago when The NY Times admitted, essentially, that the CIA staged a coup in Ukraine in 2014. Hard to say why they’ve decided to throw in the towel. Also, today, the admission that the CIA built bioweapons plants along the Russian border in Ukraine is surfacing. All the “conspiracy theories,” are true.

The CIA sought and incited this war with Russia. (Yes, I know, that makes me a Putin Puppet.) Taking down Trump was essential to this effort. The CIA risked nuclear war to do this, with Hillary Clinton running point with her Russia collusion hoax.

Another flip in DNC/CIA tactics yesterday. DNC congress critters switched tactics on demanding more funding for this CIA war. New rationale: War is good for the economy! Defense contractors thriving! As stated in the 1935 book: “War is a Racket.”

Why is The NY Times reversing course now? What’s the new play?

narciso said...

https://twitter.com/laralogan/status/1762180067202060333

Cappy said...

Shut up and get in the truck, peasant.

Ficta said...

"They "know" there's something fishy going on by god"

Of course we know there's something fishy. You oppose voter ID laws, so, of course you're planning to cheat. There is no legitimate reason to oppose voter ID.

Tommy Duncan said...

Gusty Winds nails it at 8:31.

Donald B. said...

NYT orientation for new hires sounds a bit 'cultish.'

Donald B. said...

NYT orientation for new hires sounds a bit 'cultish.'

roger said...

" But starting from a place of Party politics and assessing how a particular story could affect an election isn't journalism."

How could this possibly be a controversial statement?

D.D. Driver said...

Don't the gripes about mail in voting on the right sounds like the whining about gerrymandering on the left? Don't the George Soros conspiracies on the right sounds like the Koch Brother conspiracies on the left? Don't the ballot machine conspiracies on the right sound exactly like the ballot machine conspiracies on the left? Doesn't the pee memo sound conspiracy like Obama's birth certificate? Doesn't lock her up sounds like every single Trump indictment?

Yes.

mikee said...

Journalism is dead, killed by the idea that journalists were supposed to promote causes as activists, not report facts. Propagandists at the NY Times can all go jump in a lake, it would be more useful to the country than what they do now.

Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...

He was finger-wag in the face - shamed by the loyal leftists who work at NYT - for answering a question about his favorite sandwich. He said "chik-fil-A" - and the woke leftist loyal robots who work for NYT shamed him for it.

Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...

The laptop is real.

Joe's corruption in Ukraine and China for personal profit is real.

The informant is in prison.

Our southern border is open with millions pouring in.

USA is now a third world banana republic led by a fascist dictator and lying fraud.

hombre said...

Wild Chicken wrote: "its the same on the right."

Actually, it's not. Evidence of irregularities and fraud in elections is legion.

Evidence a la Democrat of modern voter suppression is virtually non-existent. The claim is also counter intuitive. Voter ID makes it unlikely that people would be turned away at the polls.

Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...

Leftists are stuck-up snobby fascists who think only their opinions and ideas are allowed.
That makes them Nazi-like as well.

Rusty said...

Via RCP.
Georgia Trump +6.8
Wisc Trump +1.2
Arizona Trump +4.7
Nevada Trump +8.4
Mich Trump +5.1
Penn Biden +.6
It looks like the majority of the battleground states have had enough of Democratic miss rule and are looking to get back to normalcy.

Sebastian said...

"control of the paper and who had it"

Of course. Progressivism is about control. Safety is a tool. This is news?

Rusty said...

D.D.Driver said,
"Don't the gripes about mail in voting on the right sounds like the whining about gerrymandering on the left?"
Gerrymadering is pure partisan politics. Mail in voting is designed for vote fraud. As we have seen.
" Don't the ballot machine conspiracies on the right sound exactly like the ballot machine conspiracies on the left?"
No. Because, for some reason, all the claims of vote fraud are directed at blue cities. And from my experience they are well justified. Blue cities tending to be more corrupt. How come in Wisconsin 100% of all nursing home residents vote Democrat?
" Doesn't the pee memo sound conspiracy like Obama's birth certificate? Doesn't lock her up sounds like every single Trump indictment?"
You really don't pay attention, do you? Pee tape as it turns out was totally made up by Democrat opertives. The legitamacy of Obama's birth certificate was the idea of Hillary Clinton.
Hillary demonstrably violated federal law.

Skeptical Voter said...

Well there's always a team. This fellow's problem was that he was playing for the "Team" at the New York Times "newsroom". He didn't know that his team's real name was "Nitwits".

Aggie said...

D.D. Driver says at 9:04: "Don't the gripes about ....

These all sound like the typical distractions that are rolled out (by both sides) to diffuse the energy of a discussion on any given political subject. It's the 'noise' that should be disregarded, if you're serious.

'Paper ballots and purple fingers'. There's no legitimate reason to be against these. They've been proven on battleground elections in hostile, undemocratic, non-representative environments. It's not an insurmountable logistics problem to conduct fair elections, when there are already arbitrary delays being imposed to count votes with electronic machines. Paper ballots provide evidence and substantiate recounts. There's a reason that one set of interests doesn't want to keep it simple and transparent, and the reason isn't in the interest of fair elections.

Gusty Winds said...

Blogger D.D. Driver said...
Don't the gripes about mail in voting on the right sounds like the whining about gerrymandering on the left?

No. They don't sound the same at all. Ignoring signature verification, a current address, and chain of custody makes absentee voter fraud too easy to implement. All the majority of Americans want is is one person (citizen) one vote. And if you choose not to vote, somebody else is allowed to fill out and submit a ballot in using your name. It's really chicken shit.

Liberals know the absentee voter fraud from 2020 is real. They just support the outcome. This isn't complicated.

A lot of countries require voter ID. Here's a simple list. Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Check Republic, France, Finland, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Luxembourg, Mexico, Norway, Sweden and more...

I guess they aren't as stupid or corrupt as America's liberals.

RCOCEAN II said...

What more can the NYT and WaPo do to prove they're propaganda arms of the DNC and not "objective journalists" or "A paper of record"?

One looks for the dumb normies and "Idependents" to catch on, but evidently they have to be hit on the head with something 1 million times before they change.

Howard said...

This is another reason to elect Trump for another 4 years. It's the only way to get past the corruption of the mainstream media and the DNC billionaire cabal.

Contrary to popular belief I do not fear a trump presidency because I have complete confidence and the full faith and credit of the American people. No one man has president no matter how vile or corrupt can never shake the foundations of this great nation.

I know I know. I'm overly optimistic. That's one of the side effects of having a healthy active lifestyle.

We will now return to our regularly scheduled program of conspiracy misery doubt fear angst and fantasies of violent retribution. Brought to you by ozempic

Darkisland said...

Has anyone in the media ever found anyone, as in a single person, who could not vote because they had no ID card?

We keep hearing how voter ID prevents people from voting but we never see any evidence.

I had to provide ID, proof of citizenship (Probably a birth certificate or passport) and proof of residence (Probably a utility bill, or some such) to register to vote many many years ago.

This is in Puerto Rico but would it not be similar in every other state? What documentation does one need to register to vote in, say, Wisconsin?

So why can't this same ID be used on election day at the polls?

In Puerto Rico once registered, I got a Voter ID card. This is a highly secure card, no expiration date, can't legally be used as ID for anything but voting and has to be shown at the poll when I vote.

If I turn up without the card, there is still a procedure where I can vote. I think I vote normally and they segregate my ballot until I can prove I am John Henry. Ditto, I think, if my name doesn't show up on the voter roll.

It ain't that hard to have trustworthy elections, folks. If we can do it here down south, you can surely do it.

If you cared. Or if you wanted them.

John Henry

Darkisland said...

Blogger Gusty Winds said...

A few years ago I was taking this woman down to Summerfest. On the way, I pulled into the Chick-fil-A on Capitol Drive and 124th Street. She says, "You're really stopping at HATE chicken?" I knew then she was a nutty liberal and I just had to make it through the day.

So did you stop and have a hate sandwich? Or did you wuss out and go somewhere else instead. I would have stopped and if she could not choke down a CFA would have let her go hungry.

On my way to lunch and a 2 minute hate at the CFA. I love the chicken & salad.

TIP: CFA fries their chicken, though not the fries, in peanut oil. If you are alergic or otherwise have a problem with peanuts, don't eat the fried chicken there. I had to endure a massive gout attack triggered by peanuts to find this out. The grilled chicken in the salad is fine.

John Henry

Mason G said...

If republicans gained an advantage due to voter fraud, democrats would be in favor of voter id.

It's as simple as that.

D.D. Driver said...

all the claims of vote fraud are directed at blue cities.

Derp, derp. I wonder why? Who is doing the claiming? The losers.

Dogma and Pony Show said...

"There is no voter suppression. Asking for ID or validating information on an absentee ballot is simply reasonable."

100%. When we have to show ID to get on an airplane, nobody calls it "flight suppression."

Darkisland said...


'Paper ballots and purple fingers'.

Yup. Except we take the finger thing a step further. Probably out of an over abundance of caution but still...

Instead of purple ink, we use a proprietary invisible UV ink that flouresces at a specific, secret, wavelength. The reason is that once inked, it is easy to check with a light. But since nobody else has access to the light, there would be no way to be inked, vote, then go wash the ink off and vote again. You would have no way, without the proprietary light, to know if you had gotten the ink off.

You also get checked 3 times. When you enter the polling room to make sure there is no ink, after being inked to make sure you got inked, and again on leaving the polling room to make sure you were inked.

Sounds cumbersome but it is not. We manage to get 3 million people voting, with 3 paper ballots, in the 4 hours the polls are open. And results by 7PM. All results down to town dogcatcher by 11 or so.

One other thing I forgot to mention about the ID cards. Before they went to the new, more secure, card 10-15 years ago, the old card had election years around the edge. When voting, these would be hole punched to keep the same card from being used twice.

John Henry

Joe Smith said...

It's narratives all the way down...

Darkisland said...

Picture of PR voter ID card

https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fprojectpulso.org%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2020%2F12%2Fimage10.png&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=20b59ef76b78e336a6563ab4107179495370c69f62156a90c8cc80ad68125ed8&ipo=images

Original Mike said...

"Don't the gripes about mail in voting on the right sounds like the whining about gerrymandering on the left?"
B.T. (Before Trump), it was acknowledged that mail in voting carried grave risks of fraud. European countries restrict it. US election monitors (think Jimmie Carter) identified it as the mark of corrupt elections abroad.

"Don't the George Soros conspiracies on the right sounds like the Koch Brother conspiracies on the left?"
You'd have to elaborate on the Koch Brother conspiracies. IDK what those are.

"Don't the ballot machine conspiracies on the right sound exactly like the ballot machine conspiracies on the left?"
You oppose secure elections both sides can have confidence in? Because we don't have that now.

"Doesn't lock her up sounds like every single Trump indictment?"
One (well 4) actually happened. The other didn't.

Your analogies are pathetically weak.

D.D. Driver said...

"How come in Wisconsin 100% of all nursing home residents vote Democrat?"

How would anyone know this? We have secret ballots. Can you cite a source for this claim?

Jupiter said...

Sounds like sour grapes to me.

retail lawyer said...

Whats up with The Atlantic publishing this story?

wild chicken said...

"Evidence of irregularities and fraud in elections is legion."

Blah blah blah handwaving. "Legion," eh? Maybe in Paterson NJ but everywhere?

I am actually active locally on the right. Ask the skeptics what they think is happening - some type of ballot stuffing, or what, and they punt.

"I don't know but someone oughta investigate!"

Not even a theory of the crime.

Justabill said...

The phrase that comes to mind is “welcome to the party, pal.”

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

"But starting from a place of party politics and assessing how a particular story could affect an election isn’t journalism."

True. And both sides do it all the time. The left just has more "journalists" and "news" outlets.


Actually what that quote said is incorrect. It is a specific form of journalism called an editorial or opinion piece. The problem is that those on the Left do that opinionating but call it "reporting," then they point to people on the Right like Hannity and say "see they do it too." But Hannity is clearly an opinion guy, not an allegedly impartial news guy. This bothsideism lonejustice pulls is a head fake. The NYT "news" section should be just that, straightforward news. And the editorial articles, like the Tom Cotton one at issue, should be allowed to reflect the views of the author. They used be called "think pieces" before Leftists started seeing thinking itself as dangerous and started simply hiding the news and opinions they disfavored.

Original Mike said...

"Derp, derp. I wonder why? Who is doing the claiming? The losers."

What's that prove? Why would the winners claim fraud, even if they believed it occurred?

You're not very good with this logic thing.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

John Henry writes : "I had to provide ID, proof of citizenship (Probably a birth certificate or passport) and proof of residence (Probably a utility bill, or some such) to register to vote many many years ago."

Yes I just moved to the Free State of Florida from California. When I went to obtain a drivers license, which also is the registration process for voting, I was asked for exactly those things: my CA drivers license as ID, proof of citizenship (birth certificate or passport accepted), Social Security card (or at least the correct number) and proof of residence (a utility or credit card bill).

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

How would anyone know this? We have secret ballots.

Man you are out of it. Voter registration is not secret. It is publicly available data.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

This is a lovely, very American community. The house down the street is going up for sale soon if Tina hasn't found a new spot yet. Three of her neighbors (about 1/4 the whole 'hood) would be retired cops who do target practice (sounds like 9mm) in their back yards. Florida is a Free State. Quite rural but only 20 minutes from Gainesville, where the live music and microbreweries are. Easiest most painless move since momma brought me home from the maternity ward.

Mason G said...

"This is a highly secure card, no expiration date, can't legally be used as ID for anything but voting..."

My Social Security card has no expiration date and says: "For Social Security and Tax Purposes - Not For Identification"

Just sayin'.

Joe Smith said...

You can't get a fucking library card in most places without ID.

If you are too stupid to get a valid ID then you are too stupid to vote.

This should be an easy thing to agree upon...

tommyesq said...

Evidence of irregularities and fraud in elections is legion."

Blah blah blah handwaving. "Legion," eh? Maybe in Paterson NJ but everywhere?


Typical straw-man argument. Fraud doesn't have to take place "everywhere" to affect the outcome of an election. Biden "won" in Georgia by 11,779 votes, or 0.23%. As a part of that, he became the first democrat to "win" more than 70% (specifically, 73% went to Biden) of the votes in Fulton County (i.e., Atlanta) since FDR in 1944. Fulton County reported a bit more than 500,000 votes in the 2020 election. Had Biden taken only 70% (which would have been a huge, historic anomaly, as noted above), Trump would have carried Georgia (and its 16 electoral college votes) by a little more than 6000 votes. And that is the very location that poll workers lied about a water leak, threw out the observers, and commenced counting "ballots" despite having assured poll observers that they would not do so until the observers were back the next day).

So no fraud was required anywhere in Georgia's other 158 counties was required (which is not to say that it didn't happen, just that a small amount of fraud in select locations is all that is needed).

Add in Pennsylvania, where Biden won by a little more than 80,000 votes by taking 81.44% of the Philadelphia County votes. Curiously, he outpolled Trump 2.5 to 1 on in-person voters but more than 10 to 1 in mail-in votes that were not fully "counted" for days after the election.

Those two states, standing alone, made the difference, and those two counties, standing alone, decided the states.

D.D. Driver said...

How would anyone know this? We have secret ballots.

Man you are out of it. Voter registration is not secret. It is publicly available data.


The comment was about Wisconsin. We do not "register" as members of a party. Not a thing here. Still looking for some support for the rumor that "100% of nursing home residents in Wisconsin vote Democrat." Because, I'm 99% certain that that statement is 100% made up bullshit.

Rusty said...

It was one of those watchdog groups, D.D.. It was mentioned here. Google it.
I saw it in action in Chicago, D.D.(Chicago hasn't had a republican mayor in nearly a hundred years.) The most corrupt city in the most corrupt county in the most corrupt state in the union. Check it out it's true. The are precincts in Philidelphia and Pittsburgh where they vote 100% democrat. To the point that there are many more votes cast than there are registered voters in those precincts. That's been documented too. Google it. Michigan just indicted some people who voted multiple times. Wanna guess what the common denominator is? Democrat. Have a nice sheltered whitebread life D.D.

Michelle Dulak Thomson said...

D. D. Driver: Added to which, voter registration is in the hands of the voter, yes? I am open to the possibility that nursing home residents in WI may have "voted" for someone other than their actual preferred candidate. "Bundling" is a real thing; so is getting bedridden people to sign off on things they wouldn't like. But I don't see how anyone could have affected voter registration.

Drago said...

Mike (MJB Wolf): "This bothsideism lonejustice pulls is a head fake."

Indeed.

One of the key daily tasks for our pathetic LLR-democratical Brigade (Rich, Chuck, lonejustice) is to try and deflect any negative story about their beloved democraticals onto republicans or into a bothsidesism construct.

Its completely transparent.

Jim at said...

Ask the skeptics what they think is happening - some type of ballot stuffing, or what, and they punt.

Take a good look at King County(WA) during the 2004 gubernatorial race and explain why several precincts had more votes than actual registered voters.

charis said...

Control, power, it's an old, old story. Thomas Hobbes said human life is a "perpetual and restless desire of power after power, that ceaseth only in death."

Hassayamper said...

The Italians tried mail-in voting in the 80's, but quickly discontinued the experiment when they found that it enabled the Mafia to elect corrupt puppet candidates from all the areas in Sicily and southern Italy that they controlled.

No government elected by mail-in ballots should be considered legitimate or given any kind of allegiance.

Any political party that supports vote-by-mail should be considered an army of occupation led by tyrants and traitors. They are enemies, not fellow Americans.

RMc said...

Neither side wants to fix elections, because both sides believe they can game the system better than the other side can. A "clean" election system is obviously unwelcome.