On Writing

You know thing where you're writing with the ending in mind, but the words keep going where they want to go, and that ending keeps moving further away in the opposite direction?

That's happening a lot lately.

Behold, a Tip Jar!

Alleviating Anyone's Suffering Is a Slap in the Face to Everyone Who Has Ever Suffered

Pretty sure that it's not the central tenet of Buddhism, but it is Phillip Klein's outstandingly stupid Hot Take on Elizabeth Warren's plan to Jubilee outstanding student debt:

Elizabeth Warren's plan to cancel student loan debt would be a slap in the face to all those who struggled to pay off their loans

Now let's see how this works if you change...

Franklin Roosevelt's plan to create a Social Security system would be a slap in the face to all those senior citizens who nobly died in poverty.

 ...a few...

Lyndon Johnson's plan to enact Medicare to provide health insurance to people age 65 and older, regardless of income or medical history would be a slap in the face to all those senior citizens who nobly died of medically preventable causes.

...of the words...

Teaching evolution in the public schools would be a slap in the face to every God-fearing Biblical literalist.

...around.

I could go on all day like this -- from anesthesia to zoology -- but the two points I wanted to underscore would not be made any clearer thereby.

First, Phillip Klein is indeed an idiot.

Second, Phillip Klein does indeed get paid real American money to write drivel like this.

In fact, now that I think about it, in his own, bumblefuckish way, Phillip Klein has managed to brilliantly encapsulated the very essence of Conservatism:

All progress is bad ... because I say so.  

Behold, a Tip Jar!

The Most Wondrous Thing I've Seen All Week

Your voice is much more powerful when you don't allow yourself to get sucked into the excesses of one pole or the other.I

You can oppose and grieve over past vileness of Trump's character and actions without blindly hating him.

— Charles Flemming (@ChasFlemming) April 20, 2019

Ron Fournier -- the most implacable source of bullshit Beltway Media "But Her Emails" Both Siderism during the 2016 election (and who blocked me for rudely suggesting that both sides were not equally terrible) -- ...

...is now cheering on former (and future) Republican rat-fucker Rick Wilson, who is currently making a very good living ripping off 50 year's worth of salty Liberal critique of his Republican party and passing it off as brand new epiphany...

...and being chastised by one of his Both Sides Do It zombie offspring for not being Both Siderish enough.

To quote Shalmaneser, the supercomputer in Stand on Zanzibar which ultimately came to believe it had imagined the whole world,  “Christ, what an imagination I've got.“.

Behold, a Tip Jar!

Professional Left Podcast #490

“The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present."

-- Abraham Lincoln

Don't forget to visit our new website -- http://www.proleftpod.com -- for all of the sweet bells and whistles:  there are links to donate to our podcast work at that site, as well as links to our swingin' Zazzle merch store,  our respective blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Kittehs! and much more. Many thanks once again to @theologop for building it all for us!



Links:

• The G.O.P. Promotes Leftism --  If centrist policies are doomed, why should Democrats pursue them?


• Pete Buttigieg’s Focus: Storytelling First. Policy Details Later.

The Professional Left is brought to you by our wholly imaginary "sponsors" and real listeners like you!

Republican #Passover

In what has become an annual tradition, we now join Republican Passover, already in progress...

Republican Child:  Oh father, why do we eat shitty Swanson frozen dinners and watch Fox News?

Republican Father:  We eat the shitty food and watch the Bitter Tucker to remind us of our years of bondage under the cruel lash of the Kenyan Usurper and the Liberal Media.

Republican Child:  And father, why do we dab the lintels of our door with blood of Saint Ronald Reagan?

Republican Father:  So that the Lord will know we have kept the faith and the Angel of Accountability may pass us by.

Behold, a Tip Jar!

In Direct Violation of the Beltway Iron Rule of David Brooks...

...I will now nuke any chance I ever had of landing a sweet op-ed or cable news gig by daring -- yes daring! --

-- to remember some shit Mr. David Brooks of The New York Times wrote less than one month ago:

We’ve All Just Made Fools of Ourselves — Again

...
Maybe it’s time to declare a national sabbath. Maybe it’s time to step back from the scandalmongering and assess who we are right now.

Democrats might approach this moment with an attitude of humility and honest self-examination. It’s clear that many Democrats made grievous accusations against the president that are not supported by the evidence. It’s clear that people like Beto O’Rourke and John Brennan owe Donald Trump a public apology. If you call someone a traitor and it turns out you lacked the evidence for that charge, then the only decent thing to do is apologize.
...

The sad fact is that Watergate introduced a poison into the American body politic. Richard Nixon’s downfall was just and important, but it opened up the mouthwatering possibility that you don’t need to do the hard work of persuading people to join your side. Instead, you can destroy your foes all at once through scandal.

And posting it chock-a-block with what Mr. David Brooks wrote in The New York Times today:

It’s Not the Collusion, It’s the Corruption

The Mueller report is like a legal version of a thriller movie in which three malevolent forces are attacking a city all at once. Everybody’s wondering if the three attackers are working together. The report concludes that they weren't, but that doesn’t make the situation any less scary or the threat any less real.

The first force is Donald Trump, who represents a threat to the American systems of governance...

When Trump appears in the Mueller report, he is often running roughshod over these systems and violating these values. He asks his lawyer to hamper an investigation. He asks his F.B.I. director to take the heat off his allies. He tries to get the relevant investigators fired. I don’t know if his actions meet the legal standard of obstruction of justice, but they certainly meet the common-sense standard of interference with justice.
...

The Mueller report indicates that Trump was not colluding with Russia. But it also shows that working relationships were beginning to be built, through networkers like Paul Manafort, Donald Trump Jr. and Roger Stone. More important, it shows that many of the Trumpists, the Russians and the WikiLeaks crowd all understood that they were somehow adjacent actors in the same project.
...

The Justice Department has not been defended from political assault. William Barr’s news conference before the report’s release eroded any claim to impartiality and trustworthiness.

Trump doesn’t seem to have any notion of loyalty to an office. All power in his eye is personal power, and the government is there to serve his Sun God self. He’ll continue to trample the proper systems of government.

Two things.

First, it is genuinely hilarious to see Mr. Brooks -- a mediocrity who has spent the last 15 years using his influential and wholly-unearned position in the media to pump Both Siderist toxins into our political discourse -- fixating on the idea that everyone else is slowly poisoning our politics.

Second, the alert reader will immediately notice that, in telling the tale of the Three Evil Wizards who are responsible for all of our problems  -- Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Julian Assange -- Mr. Brooks has made the entire Republican Party, the entire Conservative movement, Fox News, Hate Radio and the last 50 years of American political history...

...completely disappear from history.  Which, as I have been documenting on this blog for decades, is all part of Mr. Brooks' Great Project:

Second, it is now painfully clear that Mr. Brooks is engaged in a long-term project to completely rewrite the history of American Conservatism: to flense it of all of the Conservative social, political  economic and foreign policy debacles that make Mr. Brooks wince and repackage the whole era as a fairy tale of noble Whigs being led through treacherous hippie country by the humble David Brooks.

And odds are he'll get away with it too.

The rest is left as an exercise for the reader.

Behold, a Tip Jar!

The Long Good Friday

Point that has been made to me by several former admin officials who were witnesses to Mueller - they spoke freely and candidly because the White House decided to cooperate and not assert executive privilege. Now, they're facing Trump's wrath for a position the WH put them in

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) April 19, 2019

Poor babies.

Behold, a Tip Jar!

Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin Could Never Have Gotten Away with Firebombing American Democracy...

...if +60 million Republican voters, Republicans in congress, Hate Radio and Fox News hadn't been more than happy to drive the getaway car.

Never underestimate how much Conservatives hate this country.

Behold, a Tip Jar!

Local Arsonist Wants Credit For Not Making Things Even Worse

Congratulations to my colleagues at Republicans for the Rule of Law. Trump wanted to close down the Mueller investigation. We were a small part of the effort to stop Trump from doing so. We succeeded, and the inquiry went ahead. It might not have.

— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) April 18, 2019

This right here is why we burn the fucking lifeboats people.

Behold, a Tip Jar!

The Barr Defense In Seven Seconds

We all knew that eventually it would come down to this.

Behold, a Tip Jar!