Fake News Troll Wants To Write For Wonkette! WE SAID YES!!!!

Oh what fun we have on the Internet! Back in January, a semiliterate young man wrote in, lookin' fer a JERB! You can find out who he is by clicking through to his journamalism work, but we won't be naming him OUT LOUD like some kind of big life ruiner. And we trust you not to harass him or in any manner be life-ruiners yourselves. (Though the young man is a Milo fan, this is not like a "wink wink don't harass him" like Milo would do. We mean it. Also, he looks like he's about 12 years old. So really, no life-ruining.)

(Sic throughout.)

A Troll Finds His Mark

Hi my names Ollie I am writing to apply for a writing or editorial position with your website.I am an experienced writer and journalist with a Bachelor's degree in Journalism from the the University of Florida and 3 years of newspaper reporting experience.

I have worked as a writer at some well established organisations in the past including the Chicago Herald and a website that I founded called USAPoliticsToday which Now has over 1.2 million Facebook likes as well as over a million monthly website visitors.This wide ranging experience has allowed me to develop my writing skills as well as my all round journalistic standards to the point were I'm now passionate and committed to my writing.

I am highly investigative and curious always looking to find the most unique or pertinent angle to a story.I also have a concise conversational writing style that allows me to put together a piece quickly and efficiently with no errors.It would be my pleasure to bring these talents to your team.

I have a real passion for writing and journalism.My main goals in my writing are to report on the truth and really dig deep to find out facts and information that nobody else writes about.However with my writing I'm also determined to make sure that every thing I say is true and factual as I report on the truth and have done for every organisation that I have worked for since I got my degree.

Here are some examples of the previous articles that I have written in the past

1-http: //www.usapoliticstoday.com/nbc-cutting-show-megyn-kellys-new-show/

2-http: //www.usapoliticstoday.com/marco-rubio-vote-tillersons-confirmed/

3-http: //www.usapoliticstoday.com/kkk-protests-jeff-sessions-hearing/

I Hope you will accept this offer if so I'd love to hear back.

Thanks Ollie

We checked out his post on "KKK protests Jeff Sessions hearing," because we were pretty surethe KKK is in fact a big Jeff Sessions fan! (It is.) Here were the first two grafs:

Republican Alabama senator Jeff Sessions’s,president-elect Donald Trump’s pick for Attorney General Was scheduled to face his confirmation hearing today however he was immediately interrupted by two men dressed in KKK costumes screaming and preaching their Black Lives Matter talking points.

Following on from these two men protesting and shouting racist talking points.They were then escorted out by the police force who were their specifically to remove protestors.

Yes, that would fit in just PERFECTLY at Wonkette! But then all this news kept happening, and we forgot to offer Ollie a job befitting a man whose previous work was at the Chicago Herald, which does not exist. 

The Chicago Herald may refer to the following newspapers:

The Chicago Herald (1881–95), merged with the Chicago Times in 1895 to form the Chicago Times-Herald

The Chicago Record-Herald, its successor, published from 1901 to 1914

The Chicago Herald (1914–18), its successor, known as the Chicago Herald-Examiner from 1918 to 1939

The Chicago Herald-American, its successor from 1939 to 1953

The Daily Herald (Arlington Heights), published since 1871

Well, he is a dogged young time traveler, as is correct when you are passionate about writing and reporting on the truth.

Fake News Kid WON'T BE IGNORED, DAN

So he sent us another letter, again! This one changes his "degree" from U of F to a "course" at U of F. (His linked-in says he goes to Oxford, which seems ... unlikely as well.) Also, he says he is from Texas, but the Google Plus attached to his account says he is from Manchester, Not America, just like a young man by the same name we found on Facebook who mostly posts Milo videos and looks about 17 and is definitely NOT from Texas and probably didn't attend U of F.

Hello my name is Ollie I'm from Texas I really love your site and i love all the work that you guys are doing.In the past I wrote and co-founded a site called USA politics today which has around 1 million facebook likes and is doing quite well however I want to get my message out to a larger audience and really spread the information on a larger scale.

Thats why I'm asking if you would consider me for a potential witting slot on your website i'm passionate about politics and writing and i enjoy spreading my message to large audiences and sharing and reporting the truth when it comes to politics.

I would bring vast worldwide political knowledge to you guys.I could write articles spanning from worldwide things politics to American politics.Anything you guys need I would try my best to do

I love writing in all forms as i have just recently finished a course in writing at the university of Florida and i have a big passion for journalism as a whole so i would love to be able to apply my writing skills on your website.I have experience in Image and video editing as well as writing which is my greatest passion

I have included my CV below.

[He did not include his CV, which is good, because it was probably full of RUSSIAN PHISHING SPAMMS!]

I'd love to hear back from you guys and id be happy to provide you with any other information that you may need if so.

Thanks

Ollie

The Hook Catches The Fish, and The Fish Is US!

So we asked him to write us something. Anything he wanted! We were like "what would you write us?" and he was like "stuff" and we were like "okay!" He claimed to be a Democrat (I don't think they have those in the UK?) but that he could be hard on Dems too if they deserved it. We offered $25, and asked him to write us up a post on problems with the AHCA.

Me: ok, why don't you write me up your first suggestion, on problems with the [Trumpcare AHCA] bill? just a word doc is fine.

Nine minutes later, Ollie responded.

1. The GOP plan will lead to significant declines in coverage as well as accelerating the exhaustion of the Medicare trust fund due to the tax cuts. After years of Republicans complaining that co-pays and deductibles were too high in Obamacare, co-pays and deductibles will be significantly higher under their replacement. The plan will significantly reduce taxes on the rich.

2. Adverse selection seems like a huge problem in this plan. The individual mandate is gone, healthy people can buy coverage at any time with only a 30 percent penalty, and eliminating actuarial values makes it simpler for insurers to pull the young and healthy away from older and sick.

3. The plan is strikingly regressive compared to the Affordable Care Act. Cynthia Cox estimates that a 40-year-old making 160 percent of the poverty line would get $4,143 in subsidies under the ACA, but only $3,000 under the GOP plan. By contrast, a 40-year-old making $75,000 would get nothing under the ACA, but $3,000 under the GOP plan.

4. A core Republican complaint when Obamacare was passed was that the law delayed many of its provisions in order to reduce public outcry and manipulate the CBO’s score. The GOP bill is similarly aggressive with such tricks, delaying changes to the Medicaid expansion until 2020 and pushing Obamacare’s tax on expensive insurance plans out until 2025.

5. Nor are movement conservatives pleased with this plan, which leaves the basic architecture of Obamacare intact, and doesn’t begin to phase out the Medicaid expansion until 2020 (raising the question of whether it will ever phase out at all).

6. This is much more Obamacare 2.0 than I expected from the GOP. The structure and generosity of the subsidies change, but Medicaid is left alone until 2020, and the odds it changes after that are open to debate. On the regulatory side, many of Obamacare’s key protections, from essential benefits to lifetime limits to protections for preexisting conditions, remain in place. On the tax side, the Cadillac tax, to my surprise, survives, in theory at least.

7. Because Republicans aren’t even trying to win Democratic votes, they’re stuck designing a bill that can wiggle through the budget reconciliation process (another thing they complained about Democrats doing). That means they can’t make major changes to insurance markets like repealing Obamacare’s essential benefit standards or allowing insurance to be sold across state lines.

8. This bill has a lot of problems, and more will come clear as experts study its language, the Congressional Budget Office release its estimates, and industry players make themselves heard. But the biggest problem this bill has is that it’s not clear why it exists. What does it make better? What is it even trying to achieve? Democrats wanted to cover more people and reduce long-term costs, and they had an argument for how their bill did both. As far as I can tell, Republicans have neither. At best, you can say this bill makes every obvious health care metric a bit worse, but at least it cuts taxes on rich people?

Did you google the first paragraph too, like we did? And then all the other paragraphs? And discover they're all from the same Vox post by Ezra Klein -- and not just that, but a post from seven days ago, before the CBO score even came out! Be more up to date with your plagiarisms! A week is a year in AHCA policy reportage!

We Were All, Um, Hmmm, This Is Plagiarism?

 
 Plagiarism is Magic!

After five seconds of googling, we wrote back to our admirer:

Me: I'm unclear, is this a post you just wrote for me?

Him: yes

Him again: those are some of the key reasons why the health care plan is bad

Me: but the whole thing is from Vox ... ?

Him: yes i know did you want me to write it up myself cause if you want i can do that

Him again: sorry i misunderstood you ill write up some reasons now

WON'T GET FOOLED AGAIN!

 
 Well HELLO young Roger Daltrey, what are you doing here???

We were like well geeeeee, we don't knowwww, we asked if you wrote it and you said yes and are you even from Texas bro? But Oliver is too busy writing it up for us to respond to our gentle query. Man, I can't wait to receive it and google all the paragraphs! In the meantime, though, our young Ollie is keeping busy at his own blog, USAPoliticsToday.com, where he explains Nancy Pelosi is bad and Paul Ryan is dreamy, just like a regular US American Democrat from Manchester, UK.

There is also a massive difference between what Paul Ryan is doing now and what Nancy Pelosi said back in 2009.Ryan’s presentation yesterday was designed so that Americans could see what was in the bill. Allow me to show you myself what’s in the bill, Ryan was saying, replete with nifty charts and graphs.This is a stark contrast to Nancy Pelosi who back in 2009 was trying to ram Obamacare through committee votes in order to get a quick vote in the House and Senate.

h/t breitbart.com 

That is just a very informed vast worldwide political knowledge that is definitely true. It is also definitely plagiarized from HotAir.com. 

Pity The Fool?

So, if we'd been nicer to young Master Ollie, could we have led him away from his life of blogcrime, toward Real Journalism? Could it all have been a cry for help trying to leave behind the Fake News morass and climb out into the light? Perhaps his dumb rightwing blog, in all its illiterate glory, belied a young man wanting to seek the truth but with no mentors? Or was he trying to James O'Keefe us, so we could print his dumb plagiarized bullshit, 2: ???? and then 3: PROFIT!

Nah, it was definitely that second one.

Also, We Won't Be Paying That Nice Young Man His $25

You know how Donald and Ivanka Trump are always like "these diamonds are not good enough! We will not pay you your $2 million (but we're keeping the diamonds)"? When you turn in plagiarized work to wonkette.com, it really ISN'T good enough! We would send Ezra Klein the $25, but he's got, like, VC money, so fuck that.

 Wonkette is ad-free, VC-funding-free, supported only by Readers Like You, and was born neither yesterday nor on a turnip truck. Help a sister out!