SocraticGadfly: Laying down a 'marker' on Tara Reade

May 16, 2020

Laying down a 'marker' on Tara Reade

Or Alexandra Reade, or Tara McCabe, or Alexandra McCabe, or whomever.

Or let's give Tara Reade her real name:
"Crack Cocaine for BernieBros."

Nope. Biden still ain't dropping out. DEAL. ...
And then? STFU, for doorknob's sake.

Update, May 22: There IS someone dropping out. Doug Wigdor is dropping out of being Reade's lawyer. Guess the falsification of her academic record and possible perjury over it (see below) was a bridge too far.

Given Wigdor's Trumpist background, Reade is being thrown away like the Religious Right did to Norma Jean McCovey after giving Ms. "Roe" a few bucks to concoct a conversion story.

This big new piece by Politico, which references Lynn Hummer, whose blog I'd seen a couple of weeks ago, is a good starting point. Besides being a grifter, her degree of litigiousness stands out. Think about both of those elements now.

Let's take a peek:
“You can use these words: manipulative, deceitful, user,” said Kelly Klett, an attorney who rented Reade a room in her home in 2018. “Looking back at it all now, that is exactly how I view her and how I feel about her.” 
 “She has a problem,” said Lynn Hummer, who owns a horse sanctuary where Reade volunteered for two years, beginning in 2014. 
 She described Reade as “very clever, manipulative. ... I do think she’s a liar.” 
Hummer provided an email from an exchange in which, within weeks of starting at the ranch, Reade asked whether she could bring her car on Hummer’s property to hide it from “the repo man.” Hummer declined. 
In another instance, Reade came by the ranch desperately seeking $200 to pay the rent, Hummer said. On the way to Reade’s house, Hummer said she didn’t notice that Reade texted her and upped her request from $200 to $350.
Again, just laying down a marker.

More on her litigiousness here.

UPDATE: And a big new "boom" from the New York Times. She allegedly lied about her credentials when testifying under oath as an alleged expert witness in California domestic violence cases. Getting around paywall issues, Reddit summarizes the basics. And yes, like the million or more Elizabeth Loftus has made as an expert witness, per one Redditor, she surely was paid. Some more unwinding of threads here. Basically, part of her lying appears to be claiming to have a BA, when she didn't. And that's at CNN, no paywall. Assuming this is untrue, why did Seattle University admit her to law school in the first place? Of course, her backers will say that's proof she got the degree.

Second is Jon Chait. Yes, he's an idiot on All Things Trump.

But this? Interesting. First, he says that when Reade first popped up, he was more inclined to believe than disbelieve. (He does say that this wasn't going to change his take on the Democratic nomination process.)

He references not only Politico, but two other pieces, from PBS and Vox. I'd already read that one.

As for Chait's political choices? I assume that he was not only rallying behind Biden, but had already supported him.

From within the media world, a good piece here on "trauma reporting" and Reade. It sidebars that Biden's suddenly attracting these stories, and one that was demonstrably false was trumpeted by The Intercept, among others, before its falsehood was demonstrated.

Finally, there's Reade's infamous Putin-stanning slobber-drool piece on Medium.

Two things.

First, contra the alleged outside the box stenos of certain portions of left-liberal foreign policy opiners? One can oppose Putin, distrust how Trump approached Assange in 2016 (as he signal boosted Seth Rich conspiracy theories and also, IMO, probably had a good guess as to the provenance of the hacked emails, covered in MUCH DEPTH by me), and criticize the bipartisan foreign policy establishment at the same time.

Second, beyond "grifting" in a generic sense, maybe this is actually psychologically neurotic.

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