For at least the hundredth time, America's Most Famous Speaker-for-Plutocrats has again manifested an entire New York Times op-end column excoriating the political correctness and "faculty lounge" sensibilities of, well, somebody. Apparently, is reckless faculty loungery that makes Trump voters have bad fee-fees over their profound, malignant and self-inflicted ignorance and their often out-and-proud racism, and those bad fee-fees are, in turn, the reason why everything is fucked up and shit.
The campaign of 2016 was an education in the deep problems facing the country. Angry voters made a few things abundantly clear: that modern democratic capitalism is not working for them; that basic institutions like the family and communities are falling apart; that we have a college educated elite that has found ingenious ways to make everybody else feel invisible, that has managed to transfer wealth upward to itself, that crashes the hammer of political correctness down on anybody who does not have faculty lounge views.
Mr. Brooks then goes on to cite one of his Conservative ideological clones to underline his point --
As Robert W. Merry put it recently in The American Conservative...
-- before moving on to citing yet another Beltway Conservative and Brooks acolyte to underline his point once again:
As Yuval Levin argues in a brilliant essay in Modern Age...
Because if three, ideologically interchangeable Brooksian Conservatives say a thing, well then that thing must obviously be true!
And what would a David Brooks column be without a big, steaming load of Both Siderism smack in the middle of his addled Whiggish reveries?
Alienation also breeds a zero-sum mind-set — it’s us or them — and with it a tribal clannishness and desire for exclusion. As Levin notes, on the right alienation can foster a desire for purity — to exclude the foreign — and on the left it can foster a desire for conformity — to squelch differing speakers and faiths.
And, of course, after the main course of Medallions of False Equivalence Turd main is served and cleared, then comes dessert and brandy in the form of Mr. Brooks' utterly predictable call for Both Sides to be rejected in favor of a brand-new political elite, led by insightful yet humble Whiggish heroes like, say, David Fucking Brooks:
Now is the moment for a new establishment to organize, to address the spirit of alienation that gave rise to Trump, but which transcends him.
In other words, exactly the same lazy, dishonest, dishonorable Beltway-enthralling bullshit that David Brooks has been very profitably slinging -- come rain or shine or End of Days -- for an audience of millions for over a decade now (David Brooks, August 10, 2006) --
Party No. 3
... The McCain-Lieberman Party begins with a rejection of the Sunni-Shiite style of politics itself. It rejects those whose emotional attachment to their party is so all-consuming it becomes a form of tribalism, and who believe the only way to get American voters to respond is through aggression and stridency. The flamers in the established parties tell themselves that their enemies are so vicious they have to be vicious too. They rationalize their behavior by insisting that circumstances have forced them to shelve their integrity for the good of the country. They imagine that once they have achieved victory through pulverizing rhetoric they will return to the moderate and nuanced sensibilities they think they still possess. But the experience of DeLay and the net-root DeLays in the Democratic Party amply demonstrates that means determine ends. Hyper-partisans may have started with subtle beliefs, but their beliefs led them to partisanship and their partisanship led to malice and malice made them extremist, and pretty soon they were no longer the same people...
-- and which I have been fruitlessly deconstructing for an audience of dozens over the same period.
Wretched Mole Rat
Suffocates on own dick.
Film at 11:00
If Bobo is going to do nothing but recycle his old beerfarts over and over again into new column inches, then I may resort to rerunning old refutations and save my secret, new adjectives for new arguments. Because in his Thursday column, Bobo just retreads the tired, discredited "Tyranny of False Bisection" dodge and runs it around the block.
Again.
You know the joke (driftglass tm):
So Dick Cheney is found, naked, on the White House lawn tossing burning kittens at homeless veterans and hitting babies with a ball-peen hammer.
What are the first three words out of David Brooks’ mouth?
“But the Democrats!”
Here’s a snip from his column entitled “Party No. 3”, mercifully walled up like Fortunato behind the subscription-only fortification of the NYT...
...
Finally, because I am sprinting between appointments today, I can only provide you with this brief and incomplete list of words and phrases you will not find anywhere in Mr. Brooks' impotent indictment of our parlous modern times:
Republican.
Fox News.
Conservative talk radio.
Limbaugh.
Hannity.
Ailes.
Coulter.
O'Reilly.
Gingrich.
Paul Ryan.
Mitch McConnell.
Koch Brothers.
Alec Jones.
Breitbart.
Newsmax.
David Fucking Brooks.
Once upon a time Ron Fournier, America's Sad Clown of Centrism, promised this country that he would pack up his little "Both Sides Do It" grift and go away forever.
But such promises are for lesser mortals, so there he was again, on Fox News (Motto: "America's network leader in flagrantly broken promises!") throwing down more pure Fournier bullshit than I'd think would be healthy for a guy that age (h/t Alert Reader Rod Green) --
File under: "Conservatives Have Always Been Shit".
Always
Here is a small sampling, starting with disgrace adulterer, full-time grifter, Respected Teevee Pundit and future Vatican layabout, Newton Leroy Ginrich in 1995:
...
On Tuesday Mr Gingrich, the Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives, chose to see a moral in the story, a weapon in his battle with President Bill Clinton over Republican plans to slash welfare spending and ease taxes on the rich. "Let's talk about what the welfare state has created," he said, addressing Republican state governors in New Hampshire. "Let's talk about the moral decay of the world the left is defending." Then he talked about the murders. "This happened in America. It happened in America because for two generations we haven't had the guts to talk about right and wrong ...
"Now, a country which has this kind of thing going on - and this is not an isolated incident: there's barbarity after barbarity; there's brutality after brutality. And we shake our heads and say 'Well, what's going wrong?' What's going wrong is a welfare system which subsidised people for doing nothing; a criminal system which tolerated drug-dealers; an educational system which allows kids to not learn and which rewards tenured teachers who can't teach, while destroying poor children who it traps in the process with no hope. And then we end up with the final culmination of a drug- addicted underclass with no sense of humanity, no sense of civilisation, and no sense of the rules of life in which human beings respect each other."
On May 2, 1999, the Washington Post published new details on the pursuit of a Foster conspiracy in an article by David Brock, a key figure in the Troopergate and Whitewater scandals whose disillusionment with the political corruption motivating what would come to be known as the Arkansas Project ended his lifelong commitment to the Conservative movement and facilitated public dissemination of insider details on G.O.P. machinations. The article explains how Brock was "summoned" to a meeting with Rex Armistead in Miami, Florida at an airport hotel. Brock claims that Armistead laid out for him an elaborate "Vince Foster murder scenario" – a scenario that he found implausible.[18]
In an interview for Salon.com in 2000, Brock also revealed that he and Armistead received funding throughout Clinton's two terms in office from Richard Scaife for the initiative known as the Arkansas Project.[19] The Project reportedly aimed to discredit the sitting president and first lady through investigations into a range of issues that could potentially prove problematic for the couple, from rehashed drug smuggling allegations to their long-standing relationship with Foster and other professionals/officials in Arkansas.[citation needed]
Another prominent reporter to have received funds from Scaife was Christopher W. Ruddy[20] – a former writer for the Scaife-owned Pittsburgh Tribune-Review (and later founder of NewsMax). Eventually, Scaife became the third-largest stockholder of Ruddy's Newsmax;[21] and both NewsMax and the WorldNetDaily continued to publish materials that showed the Clintons in a negative light.[22]
In the book, he discusses mistakes and transgressions that occurred in the original investigations – in particular, alleged obstruction of justice by White House Counsel Bernard Nussbaum – but stops short of positing an original theory on the circumstances surrounding Foster's death. Interviews revealed his personal belief that some sort of cover-up took place, which involved moving Foster's body from the (unknown) site of his death to the park where it was discovered.[citation needed]
Despite Ruddy's disputed assertions,[25] the Western Journalism Center "placed some 50 ads reprinting Ruddy's [previous] Tribune-Review stories in the Washington Times in 1999; and then refashioned the Times articles into a $12 packet called simply The Ruddy Investigation".[26] Shortly thereafter, the Center "circulated a video featuring Ruddy's claims, Unanswered: The Death of Vincent Foster, that was produced by James Davidson, chairman of the National Taxpayers Union (NTU) and co-editor of the Strategic Investment newsletter."[26]
Note: There is a helluva punch-line that goes with the story of the Vince Foster lie, but you'll have to wait for it.
Onward!
Here are Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson -- two pillars of the Republican Party -- in 2001 blaming 9/11 on Liberals:
Vice President Dick Cheney says the United States will risk another terrorist attack if voters make the wrong choice on Election Day, suggesting Sen. John Kerry would follow a pre-Sept. 11 policy of reacting defensively.
"It's absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on Nov. 2, we make the right choice, because if we make the wrong choice then the danger is that we'll get hit again and we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States," Cheney told supporters at a town-hall meeting Tuesday...
In his speech, Rove said no issue better illustrated the philosophical difference between liberals and conservatives than national security. "Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 and the attacks and prepared for war," he said in a prepared text released by the White House. "Liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers."
Rove went on to say that conservatives wanted to "unleash the might and power" of the military against the Taliban in Afghanistan, while liberals wanted to submit petitions. He cited a petition he said was backed by MoveOn.org that called for "moderation and restraint" in responding to the attacks.
...
In 2006, Respected Conservative Big Thinker, Ramesh Ponnuru, publishes "The Party of Death: The Democrats, the Media, the Courts, and the Disregard for Human Life"
And of course, the Right's reactions to the Obama Administration was one, eight-year-long, unhinged, primal scream of "They're Gonna Kill Us All!!!!"
And what is the Party of Personal Responsibility up to today? Other than promising to doom untold numbers of your fellow citizens to death and misery by stripping tens of millions of Americans of their health care? And turning polluters loose on your air and water, and banksters loose on your 401k? And gutting public education. And plundering what's left of the Land of the Free to enrich themselves and their cronies. and leaving our kids broken and ruined?
Any surprise that we've come back around to Newton Leroy Gingrich?
Newt Gingrich and Sean Hannity keep Seth Rich conspiracies alive
Prominent conservatives won't stop spreading conspiracy theories about a slain DNC staffer
They have always been shit.
Always.
And the punch-line from the "Vince Foster" lie from the 1990s?
Christ Ruddy, the Newsmax bottom-feeding scumbag who was pushing the hell out of the Vince Foster lie back in the 1990s...
...is the very the same Chris Ruddy, Newsmax bottom-feeding scumbag, who is now also a paid ABC News Contributor.
The same Newsmax bottom-feeding scumbag who was given a place of honor at the Beltway Big Media table just yesterday --
STEPHANOPOULOS: We got a lot to talk about now on our roundtable. I'm joined by our chief political analyst Matthew Dowd; Democratic Congressman Keith Ellison, the deputy chair of the DNC; Newsmax Media CEO Christopher Ruddy, a friend of the president's who's joining us now as an ABC News contributor; and Democratic strategist Stephanie Cutter...
-- and who said this on network teevee --
RUDDY: So many stories, fake news stories, are becoming fact here...
-- without being sundered by a bolt of lightening from on high, or even being asked a single, inconvenient questions by any of his fellow panelists about his past as a conspiracy-mongering Newsmax bottom-feeding scumbag.
Two top Republicans working with President-elect Donald Trump's transition team told reporters in a phone call Wednesday evening that they're taking steps toward one of Trump's campaign promises -- to "drain the swamp" in Washington.
Trump communications director Jason Miller and Republican National Committee spokesman Sean Spicer announced anyone being vetted for a high post in the administration must provide a termination of lobbying form if they are a registered lobbyist.
In addition, when officials leave the government, they will be banned from being a lobbyist for five years as part of the agreement to serve in Trump's administration. The ban will apply lifetime to representing foreign governments, he added Thursday.
"Not only will people not be able to (be) registered state or federal lobbyists, but when they leave government, they will be banned from being a registered lobbyist for five years," Spicer said Wednesday.
"Why that is crucial is that it goes back to Mr. Trump's goal of making sure that people aren't using the government to enrich themselves and using their service in government to do that," he added...
White House Moves to Block Ethics Inquiry Into Ex-Lobbyists on Payroll
The Trump administration, in a significant escalation of its clash with the government’s top ethics watchdog, has moved to block an effort to disclose any ethics waivers granted to former lobbyists who have work in the White House or federal agencies.
The latest conflict came in recent days when the White House, in a highly unusual move, sent a letter to Walter M. Shaub Jr., the head of the Office of Government Ethics, asking him to withdraw a request he had sent to every federal agency for copies of the waivers. In the letter, the administration challenged his legal authority to demand the information.
Dozens of former lobbyists and industry lawyers are working in the Trump administration, which has hired them at a much higher rate than the previous administration. Keeping the waivers confidential would make it impossible to know whether any such officials are violating federal ethics rules or have been given a pass to ignore them.
Mr. Shaub, who is in the final year of a five-year term after being appointed by President Barack Obama, said he had no intention of backing down. “It is an extraordinary thing,” Mr. Shaub said of the White House request. “I have never seen anything like it.”...
Let me stress yet again that your Crazy Uncle Liberty is not hearing about any of this. And if any word of it accidentally leaked into his ideological bell jar, he -- and tens of millions like him -- would automatically dismiss it as yet more snowflake, Libtard fake news engineered by the Leftist News Conspiracy to drag his attention away from the only real story story in Christendom
Aww that's so loving of you. Snowflakes with anger issues and impulse control issues. U must believe the "robbery" gone bad story!! https://t.co/sI6GYRieoT
By now there should be a subscription service that will look up 2016 Don the Con and his stooges saying or doing the exact opposite of what 2017 Don the Con and his stooges say and do.
TRUMP: That was more than a mistake. That was done purposely. OK? That was not a mistake. That was done purposely. When you have your staff taking the Fifth Amendment, taking the Fifth so they’re not prosecuted, when you have the man that set up the illegal server taking the Fifth, I think it’s disgraceful. And believe me, this country thinks it’s — really thinks it’s disgraceful, also.
“So there are five of them taking the Fifth Amendment, like you see on the mob, right?” he said at another rally in Iowa, though it was three former Clinton staff members who pleaded the Fifth. “The mob takes the Fifth Amendment. If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?”
The Latest: AP Source says Flynn will invoke Fifth Amendment
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Latest on ongoing investigations into Russia’s alleged interference with the U.S. election (all times local):
9:30 a.m.
Former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn will invoke his Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination on Monday as he notifies the Senate Intelligence committee that he will not comply with a subpoena seeking documents.
That’s according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter. The person spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the private interactions between Flynn and the committee.
Flynn’s decision comes less than two weeks after the committee issued a subpoena for Flynn’s documents as part of the panel’s investigation into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election...
I cannot emphasize enough how little your Crazy Uncle Liberty is hearing about any of this. To him -- and tens of millions like him -- this is just more snowflake, Libtard fake news, happening far, far away and intended by the Leftist News Conspiracy to distract him from the only real story story in his airless, lightless little world.
Aww that's so loving of you. Snowflakes with anger issues and impulse control issues. U must believe the "robbery" gone bad story!! https://t.co/sI6GYRieoT
Exhaustion to blame for Trump’s ‘Islamic terror’ comment: aide
Couple of things.
First, not even a syringe of "proprietary energy serum" the size of the Chrysler Building can make President Stupid's bottomless well of public hypocrisy go away:
For those who cite 'negative' Trump coverage: how can we ignore THIS when he won by ridiculing stamina/health of opponents? cc: @HowardKurtzpic.twitter.com/OWcOeo8f8S
Second, none of this will matter to the Pig People who are hunkered down in their Fury Bunkers with this depraved asshole's incendiary ravings turned up to 11:
Aww that's so loving of you. Snowflakes with anger issues and impulse control issues. U must believe the "robbery" gone bad story!! https://t.co/sI6GYRieoT
Because professional Beltway Both Siderist scuttlefish like Ron Fournier -- who make their living dressing up and playing "journalist" in the shelter provided by the First Amendment -- have no fucking clue how the First Amendment actually works.
It's the bitchy, bitter, Limbaughesque "You Liberals are supposed to be tolerant of my assholery" bit that makes it art.
What makes you think they were "afraid," rather than repulsed? And since when does freedom of thought and expression exclude protest? https://t.co/QjkDbI500O
I know it is absolutely verboten to go around mentioning the Past in mixed political company. I know it is shameful and wrong and strident, but today -- instead of a rundown of the Sunday Morning fire-at-the-freak-show-ruins of what we once called journalism, I'm going to set myself the task of doing it anyway but without mentioning the "F" word even once.
I can do it!
You see, long ago in The Time Before Trump, there were many prominent Serious Conservatives who worked in the very lucrative Public Opinion Formation business. And during this ideological prehistory, while Fox News and Hate Radio and Gingrichism was swallowing their Republican Party whole like an anaconda swallowing a hamster, they swung right on behind the Roger Ailes/Rush Limbaugh parade, singing nothing buy paeans of praise during the eight, agonizing years of the Failed Bush Administration.
Being a Neocon Means Never Having to Say You’re Sorry
These guys were wrong about every aspect of Iraq. Why do we still have to listen to them?
From 2001 until sometime around 2006, the United States followed the core neoconservative foreign-policy program. The disastrous results of this vast social science experiment could not be clearer. The neoconservative program cost the United States several trillion dollars and thousands dead and wounded American soldiers, and it sowed carnage and chaos in Iraq and elsewhere.
One would think that these devastating results would have discredited the neoconservatives forever, just as isolationists like Charles Lindbergh or Robert McCormick were discredited by World War II, and men like former Secretary of State Dean Rusk were largely marginalized after Vietnam. Even if the neoconservative architects of folly are undaunted by failure and continue to stick to their guns, one might expect a reasonably rational society would pay them scant attention.
Yet to the dismay of many commentators — including Andrew Bacevich, Juan Cole, Paul Waldman, Andrew Sullivan, Simon Jenkins, and James Fallows — neoconservative punditry is alive and well today. Casual viewers of CNN and other news channels are being treated to the vacuous analysis of Paul Wolfowitz, Dick Cheney, and Bill Kristol.
...
But how (you ask) could these same discredited hacks have remained alive and employed during the Age of Obama when they so publicly and comprehensively shit the bed during the Age of Bush?
Foreign Policy magazine lists many cause. For example, it helps to be utterly shameless, which American Conservatives certainly are. Also, Team Evil always makes sure there is an almost incomprehensibly huge trough of money available to anyone who can string a few words together and who will work for their monstrous causes. And, of course, it helps enormously to have a broken and compliant media (I will helpfully emphasize the names of a few of the cardinal sinners.)
3. A Receptive and Sympathetic Media
Neoconservatives would have much less influence if mainstream media didn’t continue to pay attention to them. They could publish their own journals and appear on Fox News, but the big force multiplier is their continued prominence in places like the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and other outlets. Neocons continue to have frequent access to op-ed pages, and are commonly quoted by reporters on a range of foreign-policy issues.
This tendency is partly because some important members of the mainstream media are themselves neoconservatives or strongly sympathetic to its basic worldview. David Brooks of the New York Times, Charles Krauthammer and Fred Hiatt of the Washington Post, and Bret Stephens of the Wall Street Journal are all card-carrying neoconservatives and were, of course, prominent voices in the original pro-war camp. The Times even hired [Bill] Kristol to write an op-ed column back in 2005 — after Iraq had already gone south — and he might still be doing that today if his columns hadn’t been so dull and sloppy.
But it’s not just the neoconservatives’ continued presence in the mainstream press.
Neoconservatives continue to exercise influence because the rest of the U.S. media is obsessed with "balance," and because lackadaisical reporters know they can always get a hawkish neoconservative quote to balance whatever they are being told by the Obama administration or by more dovish voices. As long as reporters think balance matters more than accuracy, neoconservatives will still find plenty of places to peddle their particular version of foreign-policy snake oil.
Iraq had indeed gone horribly, predictably tits-up by 2005. And by way of a quick history lesson in what the world was like just a few years ago, here is a snip of me from January 2006. which I assure you was not terribly different from what pretty much every other Liberal pariah with a keyboard was writing at that time:
...
Dissent, we are warned, is treason. Dissent is anti-American. And riffling through the whole deck of dreck that the Rightards swallow as gospel (because, face it, if you’re a Republican in this day and age, you pretty much have to take off the shoes and footies to do the Big Math, don’thcha?) there is nothing more completely nauseating that Americans ranting that disagreeing with their government is…un-American.
Well, ok, the fact that this uncut Stalinism comes from the team that bills itself the Party Of Small Gummint does make it a bit more perfectly perverse. But then again, since they are run by a cabal of some of the worst enemies of Christianity in American history who snipe at non-cultists from behind a pile of bibles and cash purloined from gullible old cancer patients so really, what can one expect?
And the reason is very straightforward. As with any criminal enterprise, the one thing that cannot be allowed is confession and atonement; it pisses the other gangsters off.
Simply put, Dubya thinks like every other drunk who ever lived. He thought that his failures and bullshit would never catch up with him. That his lies about nukes and terrorists, his “Brownie”-ization of the federal government, his spying on American citizens, torture…all of it and so very much more, that he never in his wildest fucking dreams ever though he would have to answer for.
Whether propping his worthless self up and keeping his grandiose ego inflated on liquor or GOP snakehander superstition, he has never been anything but a punkass child who hid behind Daddy’s wallet and name, and our great modern tragedy has not been 9/11, but that our President has so conspicuously failed to rise to meet that challenge.
That in the end, like the alky coward he is, he took September 11th down to the Check-N-Go at 2:00, cashed it, and blew the whole fucking thing on the Shiny, Useless War that he really, reeeeally wanted instead of the things his family actually needed. As for over two years, he has gotten away with driving his Shiny, Useless War all over Iraq and strutting and fretting and slurring his hour upon the world stage – an undeserving man to whom chance gave a shot at greatness, and whose small, mean soul let him piss it all away.
And now the tab comes due.
Now we rise groggily to our feet and look around and wonder, shit, who the Hell is gonna pay for this mess, and we turn to the President who wrecked the place and start asking hard questions. Which is when the true nature of the Right rears its ugly head.
When, suddenly, we free and proud Americans are told that we now have a fucking King, and it is treason to talk against Him. Which is why his Party is doomed.
Because politics aside, the GOP has put this country into some very deep and dangerous shit, and only by diagnosing the problems accurately will we ever begin to climb out the hole they dropped us is.
...
And for the sake of comparison, here is Very Serious Conservative Bret Stephens back in September of 2006 when he was a respectable Republican member of the editorial board of Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal. Spoiler: It's all straight Fox News Republican Party line...
For example, the Iraq War was a terrific idea...
Well, what's, you know - I think there's this famous story that Mao or maybe Zhou Enlai had a conversation with either Nixon or Kissinger in which I'll say Nixon asked Mao what he thought the affects of the cultural revolution were and - not the cultural revolution, the French revolution were - and Mao's reply was "It's too soon to tell." That was, you know, 180 years after the date. So it's very hard from, you know, the standpoint of the present to make a final determination about the decision. But I do think that from this standpoint it was the right decision...
And even if the original reasons we were given were, y'know, lies, well, it was still a terrific idea...
Thirdly, I do think that the democracy agenda really did start to become much more relevant in the days after September 11th when you said, you know, you have - you have here conditions which create a culture and whether Saddam Hussein was or was not - and, you know, apparently he was not actually connected to the bin Laden or the planners of this attack - he was, in a sense, part of, you know, a kind of element, symbol of this culture in which they swam and someone needed to take a very big swing at that.
And anyway, some imaginary Liberal out there somewhere would probably be bagging on Dubya if he hadn't, y'know, lied us into the wrong war...
It would have - I wonder what, for instance, someone like John Kerry would be saying if Saddam Hussein were still in power. I bet he'd be saying, you know, this president - well I mean I don't want to put words in Mr. Kerry's mouth but I bet someone out there, some current critic of the war would be saying this president has allowed Saddam Hussein to remain in place while he brutalizes his people, almost certainly works on weapons of mass destruction programs, and plots against his neighbors.
And whether or not it Iraq had become a meat-grinding, army-breaking, treasury-bankrupting clusterfuck (oops) is less important than the awesomeness of our intentions...
Now talking about what happened after the war is a different - is really a different subject, whether it could have been handled differently. Those are all legitimate criticisms. But the original decision to go to war I think was right.
Also Democrats should seriously consider losing in 2006 because something something strategery!
But I would say this I think with more confidence, I think that if I were a card-carrying Democrat, rank-and-file Democrat, the last thing I would want is for this Democratic congressional leadership to come into majority positions because that will play very well for Republicans two years down the road when the stakes are bigger...
And how you noticed how very shrill Nancy Pelosi is?
Because I think that Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid cut very unattractive political figures. I know neither of them so again, this impression is a surface one. But you get the sense when you're listening to Pelosi that she - that she's dreading the follow-up question because she doesn't know. There is a kind of shrillness about her style of politics as well as - as well as Harry Reid's' and also a bit of a hollowness...
In fact, the terrorist-loving Left would be much better served shutting up and getting in line...
And I do think the Democrats have to do a better job of getting seriously aboard the war on terror...
And you hear that occasionally from Democrats but what you really hear, I mean the kind of broad meta message is we're going to get out of Iraq, and we're going to sort of - it's going to be a kind of come-home-America moment. And I think that's not a good message for the Democrats to have...
And how about that Joe Lieberman! Ain't he just the cat's fucking silk PJs? (oops again)
One thing that I am heartened by is what seems to be Joe Lieberman's strength in Connecticut. It displays a kind of I think healthy instinct among voters. But you want Democrats just like Joe Lieberman...
Then, during the Obama Administration -- during thsoe eight years of lockstep, unremitting Republican lying and raving racism and performance art vandalism -- these very same Serious Conservatives all once again took their place at the contralto end of the wingnut chorus, and dutifully sang sad dirges about "The Extremes on Both Sides" and "Why Won't Obama Lead?".
And now that the myriad frauds and perpetrated by their Republican Party during the Age of Obama have been exile to the unmentionable Past and their Republican Party has elected a manifestation of it's own, pure, unhinged Id as president, those same Serious Conservatives -- Serious Conservatives like David Brooks, Charles Krauthammer, Fred Hiatt and Bret Stephens -- have all suddenly discovered the existence of Fox News, and Hate Radio and the rest of the vast, wingnut welfare system that has been the bulwark of their Republican Party for virtually their entire adult lives.
And they have all found shiny new side-hustles bravely writing about the Derangement of the Right, in ways that are hilariously identical to what the dirty, America-hating Left has been writing for decades.
Shiny new side-hustles bravely writing about the Villainy of Fox News, 20 years too late and only after Roger Ailes is safely dead.
From Bret Stephens in his brand new job cranking out Serious Conservative opinions for The New York Times
Roger Ailes: The Man Who Wrecked Conservatism
Oh no, Bret. Ailes didn't wreck Conservatism. You did. You and David Brooks and Charles Krauthammer and Fred Hiatt and Michael Gerson and David Frum and all the rest of you.
Conservatism was wrecked because back when it mattered, you Serious Conservatives were nowhere to be found. Back when it mattered, you didn't stand up to Ailes, but instead happily stood aside while Ailes and Limbaugh and Levin and Coulter and all the rest did the dirty, despicable work of slandering the Left and pandering to the worst instincts of the Right.
Dirty work you were too dainty to do, but were only too happy to profit from as long Fox News and Hate Radio focused the rage and paranoia of the Pig People on targets you didn't like anyway.
I tried to warn you back in 2005, Bret. Warn you that this very day would come and there would be a terrible price to pay for your silent, spineless complicity. I even used very simple words as one does when speaking to a small child, but you didn't listen. None of you listened. And here we are, a decade later, a decade older. Me. still a foolish Liberal pariah, still shouting into the maelstrom. And you, with a glorious new job as The New York Times' newest Serious Conservative, writing pieces that are virtually indistinguishable --
Nor does the network have any fixed set of ideas that it seeks to champion or disseminate, other than an ostentatious patriotism that has the distinct feel of a marketing campaign.
What Fox is mainly in the business of doing is hating the left. In the manner of Ailes himself, its convictions stem from its resentments — and shift accordingly. It is sympathetic to military intervention when the left is against it (Iraq) and hostile when the left is for it (Libya); anti-Russia when President Obama was reaching out to Russia, pro-Russia when Obama started getting tough on the Kremlin.
-- from what people like me were getting stomped to bits for writing a decade ago.
But with one big difference, of course, because despite all we have been through, it is still career suicide for Serious Conservatives to speak aloud the most terrible and worst-kept Beltway secret of them all: that the Left has been right about the Right all along.
You and your kind already failed the gravest moral test of your lives when you chose to knife the truth in the back and threw in with monsters because it was easy and profitable and that was the way the wind was blowing. And speaking for all Liberals everywhere, while we welcome old adversaries who have truly seen the light and now fight on the side of the angels. until we see actual confession, genuine contrition and sincere atonement from America's Serious Conservatives, we're not interested in whatever you're selling.
