I'm confused. The Washington Institute for Near East Policy has not failed a fact check in five years but rates 87% because Qatari-funded Al Jazeera doesn't like it? That's just marginally better than Code Pink, which is a Maoist organization dedicated to dismantling the west.
This was good in concept, but I'm not finding it useful. Racket is publishing more content, but I'm reading less of it.
Was confused as well, so looked up the intro to this series. Shill-o-meter is "the percentage chance that the “expert opinion” is a politically predetermined conclusion." I like the idea; it covers both commission and omission; is what is being presented simply to back up a pre determined conclusion or not?
As I've learned thanks to "news" media over the past decades, the best liars are subtle bastards who's facts (the ones they include of course) all check out as they create an utterly false narrative.
The "subtle bastards" are also the ones who lie by omission. Like, they're give you a lot of the facts that check out and spin their narrative. But they leave out the inconvenient facts that would change their narrative from the take that they spun. NYT was the poster child for this during the Biden years. For that matter, Hillary's 2016 campaign as well. Probably Obama too, but i didn't read them much then.
Thanks for explaining, I was struggling to understand the Shill-O-Meter myself.
The other thing I'm wondering is what "'Experts' Yes/No" really means - in hindsight, the quotation marks seem to imply that it has more to do with how they're treated by others than what they've worked to earn, is that right?
When Matt introduced the changes to Racket, he said "We Care If It's True. We Don't Care Why." In this case, they don't seem to care if what an organization is saying is true.
These ratings are useless if they can't differentiate between a scholarly organization with an opinion based on facts and a group of activists who manufacture propaganda for the CCP.
Ahh, there lies the first line of mirrors in the Wilderness of Mirrors!
One shill's fact check is another's "shill check". Each story or journalist's report is different and every reader must exercise cynicism in each line of text.
For example, the UK Daily Mail just moments ago stated: "STAGGERING number of US Troops Wounded in TRUMP'S WAR!" is as biased a "covert" propaganda statement posing as journalistic reporting as you'll ever see. First, the number was unconfirmed, second, how does that compare with previous actions in Afghanistan and Iraq and how many were actual combat WIA.
"Staggering" is an politically weaponizing adjective that cannot be quantified too.
I had no idea that codepink was upgraded to a think tank whose diatribe actually ended up as analysis in the likes of the "New York Times, Washington Post, CBS, and Bloomberg as subject matter experts on the Iran War".
All the breathless hyperventilating coverage of Operation Epic Fury is 1-sided partisan trash. The Trumpers and the Deep Staters are both hard to tolerate.
Normal for all things DC, over the last 11+ years, of the Trump saga.
Think tanks, NGOs, non-profits, and so many Fed Gov "experts" are in a panic. Their entire adult life work histories are based on historically poor policies and results abroad and domestically.
Even the Financial Press has become laughably childish in their fearful & outrageous claims of doom & gloom.
Thank you Racket News and thank you Jillian for bringing a little bit of clarity on the sources.
The Combating Terrorism Center - West Point is essentially a propaganda channel for the Uniparty. All of its studies will be of course vetted by the Pentagon (as long as Hegseth/Gabbard can't control it), the American Intelligence Community and the GOP RINOs in the legislative branch. IMHO they may not be shills as you have defined it, but they are certainly misleading readers to a Uniparty policy line. They are certainly not friendly towards the Trump White House strategy, subtly undermining it when it does not match the Uniparty strategy.
Ignore the naysayers! Even if the science is imperfect, Racket’s opening all our eyes to the biases of our expert class and forcing us to ask whose agenda’s being pushed and ox is being gored. I wish we had a service like this here in Corrupticut.
Heard of CodePink but never really knew what they were about, I assumed that it was some sort of feminist pink pussy hat thing. Although i'm not a fan of their methods or grandstanding, and I'm not "pro" any country except for my own (ie this one), i can't quibble with their anti-foreign intervention stance.
As mentioned, they predate "pussy-hats" by a very long time. Despite their Baby-Boomers-with-Sundown-Syndrome aesthetic, I actually think pretty highly of them; they have a good track-record where it matters most, have never allowed "Feminism"™ to hijack or get in the way of their anti-war mission, and (like Matt) they've earned my trust by my seeing them repeatedly choose integrity over political expedience in contrast with outwardly-similar groups/individuals who made the other choice.
I have to wonder what all these "think tank" employees have lined up for their next hustle. It would seem that they would be some of the first affected by the AI encroachment.
I've usually found that the entities that have "Center" in their name are the most dangerous for the nation. They usually contend that they are non-partisan, but a cursory reading of their positions will prove otherwise.
I like to think most readers and viewers have a pretty good intuitive sense of where the 'experts' they encounter on screen and in print are coming from, but it's great to have hard evidence about their institutional indebtedness. Who funds the organization that employs you, and what kind of people is it likely to hire? How many of your colleagues disagree with you politically, and how often do you appear in forums where the consensus on major issues diverges from the one that seems written in stone where you're opining now? There are many such questions that could be asked, but we're never going to get anything like this level of transparency from legacy media. So you're performing an important public service by offering some here.
The response rate to your invitation to the organizations in question to chime in is disappointing, but speaks volumes about their own level of enthusiasm for information transparency.
That “Iranian missile” photo keeps showing up in the news. It looks like welded steel. Aren’t missiles typically made from aluminum? Reminds me of before the Iraq war and we kept getting shown pictures of phony WMD train cars. Any metal or missile experts out there who can verify if that is a genuine missile or a fake?
Maybe he got free trips like Sen Mark Kelly. Kelly met Giffords at an all-expense paid five-day retreat co-hosted by Young Leaders Forum and the Chinese People's Institute of Foreign Affairs in 2003. Mark also participated in the 2004 & 2005 Young Leaders Forum conferences. He took a 2003 Forum banner with him on a 2006 space mission. He did considerable business in China after leaving the military in 2012. This tidbit along with others can be found in Trevor Loudon’s book Security Risk Senators Part 1, pub 2022.
So this SS only covered think tanks located in DC. Will others be reviewed also. Lots of them have positions for 'war' experts or at least have them on their boards or as Directors. Hoover has Condoleezza. I wonder what Hoover Inst. Shill-o-Meter is.
My understanding of West Point comes from reading Lee Child's Jack Reacher books, so no claim of expert status. However, a West Pointer who retired only made it to Major? I've gotten the impression that Lt. Colonel is table stakes-expected advancement for a Pointer, and of course, many graduates become full-bird and/or get stars.
So a mediocre officer becomes a billionaire and starts a biased think tank? This is not impressive news.
I think it's worth pointing out that advancement in the military, especially at the higher ranks, has more to do with toeing the line (otherwise known as sucking up) than actual output. The military brass, regardless of the pesky questions about the merits of their decisions, tend to put a stop to any questions to their dubious actions by underlings by stalling or ending their careers.
I'm confused. The Washington Institute for Near East Policy has not failed a fact check in five years but rates 87% because Qatari-funded Al Jazeera doesn't like it? That's just marginally better than Code Pink, which is a Maoist organization dedicated to dismantling the west.
This was good in concept, but I'm not finding it useful. Racket is publishing more content, but I'm reading less of it.
Was confused as well, so looked up the intro to this series. Shill-o-meter is "the percentage chance that the “expert opinion” is a politically predetermined conclusion." I like the idea; it covers both commission and omission; is what is being presented simply to back up a pre determined conclusion or not?
As I've learned thanks to "news" media over the past decades, the best liars are subtle bastards who's facts (the ones they include of course) all check out as they create an utterly false narrative.
The "subtle bastards" are also the ones who lie by omission. Like, they're give you a lot of the facts that check out and spin their narrative. But they leave out the inconvenient facts that would change their narrative from the take that they spun. NYT was the poster child for this during the Biden years. For that matter, Hillary's 2016 campaign as well. Probably Obama too, but i didn't read them much then.
Thanks for explaining, I was struggling to understand the Shill-O-Meter myself.
The other thing I'm wondering is what "'Experts' Yes/No" really means - in hindsight, the quotation marks seem to imply that it has more to do with how they're treated by others than what they've worked to earn, is that right?
When Matt introduced the changes to Racket, he said "We Care If It's True. We Don't Care Why." In this case, they don't seem to care if what an organization is saying is true.
These ratings are useless if they can't differentiate between a scholarly organization with an opinion based on facts and a group of activists who manufacture propaganda for the CCP.
"Fact check" by whom?
Ahh, there lies the first line of mirrors in the Wilderness of Mirrors!
One shill's fact check is another's "shill check". Each story or journalist's report is different and every reader must exercise cynicism in each line of text.
For example, the UK Daily Mail just moments ago stated: "STAGGERING number of US Troops Wounded in TRUMP'S WAR!" is as biased a "covert" propaganda statement posing as journalistic reporting as you'll ever see. First, the number was unconfirmed, second, how does that compare with previous actions in Afghanistan and Iraq and how many were actual combat WIA.
"Staggering" is an politically weaponizing adjective that cannot be quantified too.
I had no idea that codepink was upgraded to a think tank whose diatribe actually ended up as analysis in the likes of the "New York Times, Washington Post, CBS, and Bloomberg as subject matter experts on the Iran War".
All the breathless hyperventilating coverage of Operation Epic Fury is 1-sided partisan trash. The Trumpers and the Deep Staters are both hard to tolerate.
Normal for all things DC, over the last 11+ years, of the Trump saga.
Think tanks, NGOs, non-profits, and so many Fed Gov "experts" are in a panic. Their entire adult life work histories are based on historically poor policies and results abroad and domestically.
Even the Financial Press has become laughably childish in their fearful & outrageous claims of doom & gloom.
Thank you Racket News and thank you Jillian for bringing a little bit of clarity on the sources.
The Combating Terrorism Center - West Point is essentially a propaganda channel for the Uniparty. All of its studies will be of course vetted by the Pentagon (as long as Hegseth/Gabbard can't control it), the American Intelligence Community and the GOP RINOs in the legislative branch. IMHO they may not be shills as you have defined it, but they are certainly misleading readers to a Uniparty policy line. They are certainly not friendly towards the Trump White House strategy, subtly undermining it when it does not match the Uniparty strategy.
Ignore the naysayers! Even if the science is imperfect, Racket’s opening all our eyes to the biases of our expert class and forcing us to ask whose agenda’s being pushed and ox is being gored. I wish we had a service like this here in Corrupticut.
Thanks, Jillian!
Heard of CodePink but never really knew what they were about, I assumed that it was some sort of feminist pink pussy hat thing. Although i'm not a fan of their methods or grandstanding, and I'm not "pro" any country except for my own (ie this one), i can't quibble with their anti-foreign intervention stance.
As mentioned, they predate "pussy-hats" by a very long time. Despite their Baby-Boomers-with-Sundown-Syndrome aesthetic, I actually think pretty highly of them; they have a good track-record where it matters most, have never allowed "Feminism"™ to hijack or get in the way of their anti-war mission, and (like Matt) they've earned my trust by my seeing them repeatedly choose integrity over political expedience in contrast with outwardly-similar groups/individuals who made the other choice.
You could contrast them with what's described here: https://fair.org/home/support-the-tropes/
I have to wonder what all these "think tank" employees have lined up for their next hustle. It would seem that they would be some of the first affected by the AI encroachment.
I've usually found that the entities that have "Center" in their name are the most dangerous for the nation. They usually contend that they are non-partisan, but a cursory reading of their positions will prove otherwise.
I like to think most readers and viewers have a pretty good intuitive sense of where the 'experts' they encounter on screen and in print are coming from, but it's great to have hard evidence about their institutional indebtedness. Who funds the organization that employs you, and what kind of people is it likely to hire? How many of your colleagues disagree with you politically, and how often do you appear in forums where the consensus on major issues diverges from the one that seems written in stone where you're opining now? There are many such questions that could be asked, but we're never going to get anything like this level of transparency from legacy media. So you're performing an important public service by offering some here.
The response rate to your invitation to the organizations in question to chime in is disappointing, but speaks volumes about their own level of enthusiasm for information transparency.
That “Iranian missile” photo keeps showing up in the news. It looks like welded steel. Aren’t missiles typically made from aluminum? Reminds me of before the Iraq war and we kept getting shown pictures of phony WMD train cars. Any metal or missile experts out there who can verify if that is a genuine missile or a fake?
This is great stuff. Did codepink pay for any of Tim waltz trips to China?
Btw, this is a joke on my part but it is a serious question on who paid for all his trips
Maybe he got free trips like Sen Mark Kelly. Kelly met Giffords at an all-expense paid five-day retreat co-hosted by Young Leaders Forum and the Chinese People's Institute of Foreign Affairs in 2003. Mark also participated in the 2004 & 2005 Young Leaders Forum conferences. He took a 2003 Forum banner with him on a 2006 space mission. He did considerable business in China after leaving the military in 2012. This tidbit along with others can be found in Trevor Loudon’s book Security Risk Senators Part 1, pub 2022.
I can't figure out which syllable of "Shill-o-Meter" to emphasize and I can no longer sleep. Help!
Try saying it like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UoiCNmQQUCI
Maybe Shillometer (like odometer) is the way to go.
Thanks. I will stop thinking about it.
Editors, how credible are guys like Scott Ritter, Larry Johnson, basically the regulars on Judge Napolitano’s YouTube channel?
And that Chinese professor who’s gotten famous for predicting the war. What’s his deal?
So this SS only covered think tanks located in DC. Will others be reviewed also. Lots of them have positions for 'war' experts or at least have them on their boards or as Directors. Hoover has Condoleezza. I wonder what Hoover Inst. Shill-o-Meter is.
Thank you!
My understanding of West Point comes from reading Lee Child's Jack Reacher books, so no claim of expert status. However, a West Pointer who retired only made it to Major? I've gotten the impression that Lt. Colonel is table stakes-expected advancement for a Pointer, and of course, many graduates become full-bird and/or get stars.
So a mediocre officer becomes a billionaire and starts a biased think tank? This is not impressive news.
I think it's worth pointing out that advancement in the military, especially at the higher ranks, has more to do with toeing the line (otherwise known as sucking up) than actual output. The military brass, regardless of the pesky questions about the merits of their decisions, tend to put a stop to any questions to their dubious actions by underlings by stalling or ending their careers.
Reading this makes me want to recreate Henri Curiel's Solidarité organization.