Peggy Noonan, a longtime conservative columnist for the Wall Street Journal, is joining NBC and MSNBC as a political commentator, The Hill reports.
Noonan appeared on the network's "Meet the Press" Sunday in her debut.
Noonan was a speechwriter for former President Ronald Reagan. Starting with the 2016 election, Noonan has been a frequent critic of President Donald Trump...
There is literally no barrier to permanent Beltway employment other than already being in The Club.
Conversely, if you're not in The Club, you do not exist. Unless, of course, you're a freshly decanted, white Conservative man-baby with the right connections and paperwork, in which case everyone at NPRand The New York Timesand Meet the Pressand Time magazine and on and on are all deeply, deeply interested in every little thing you have to say about everything -- from how Donald Trump will save Murrica, to why your previous deeply-held opinion about Donald Trump saving Murrica may have been poorly considered.
Julius Krein, a conservative who founded the pro-Trump journal American Affairs, now regrets his vote for Donald Trump. What a story! Such an astounding story, in fact, that he has been given space at the New York Times to tell his amazing tale of being catastrophically wrong.
Well, this is made a little easier knowing that my pal Tengrain and Mock, Paper, Scissors -- who owns clear title to the Noonan Genre and don't you forget it! -- will not lack for raw materials with which to work his magic anytime in the near future.
Hanging on in moneyed desperation is the Beltway way
Your time is gone, your song is over,
You have nothing more to say.
Like tens of millions of his fellow Americans, yesterday Mr. David Brooks of The New York Times paused in his daily perambulations long enough to look up and witness the 2017 eclipse.
But Mr. David Brooks is no ordinary American human. Mr. Brooks a Modest Man. A Centrist Man. A cardinal of the High and Holy Church of Both Siderism.
Mr. Brooks believes"The truth is plural" -- a skittish unicorn which exists in "...a tension between two or more views, each of which possesses a piece of the truth."
Mr. Brooks is a sailor upon a rough sea who, like his fellow Moderate Rebel Saviors of the Republic,"...[doesn’t] operate from the safety of their ideologically pure galleons."
A Both Siderist rebel who knows that "Creativity is syncretistic." And that "[v]oyagers don’t just pull their ideas from the center of the ideological spectrum. They believe creativity happens when you merge galaxies of belief that seem at first blush incompatible."
Galaxies! Galleons! Face it people, Mr. David Brooks is a god damn raging torrent of ideas, flooded with rivulets of thought cascading into a waterfall of creative alternatives who uses his tongue purdier than a twenty dollar whore.
And so, being a Americas Most Trusted Both Siderist Tension Truther, Mr. Brooks carefully listened to one side who warned that staring into the sun with your naked eye is bad, and then carefully listened to the other side which believes that science is bunkum. Then, merging those galaxies of partial truths, Mr. Brooks confidently closed one eye and stared directly into the sun with the other.
Then there was a tiny sizzling sound. Like spit hitting a hot griddle. Followed by a fast trip to the ER. Followed by a somber conversation between Mr. Brooks and his person physician. Apparently, in addition to frying his sclera, cornea. pupil, iris, vitreous humors, retina, and optic nerve, Mr. Brooks also cooked the bits of his cerebral cortex, cerebellum and basal ganglia that handle the perception of time.
Which is why Mr. Brooks apparently his no memory whatsoever of already writing this same fucking ridiculous Both Siderist claptrap over and over and over again pretty much every god damn week, rain or shine, for the past 14 years.
There are two major parties on the ballot, but there are three major parties in America. There is the Democratic Party, the Republican Party and the McCain-Lieberman Party.
All were on display Tuesday night.
The Democratic Party was represented by its rising force — Ned Lamont on a victory platform with the net roots exulting before him and Al Sharpton smiling just behind.
The Republican Party was represented by its collapsing old guard — scandal-tainted Tom DeLay trying to get his name removed from the November ballot. And the McCain-Lieberman Party was represented by Joe Lieberman himself, giving a concession speech that explained why polarized primary voters shouldn’t be allowed to define the choices in American politics.
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.
The McCain-Lieberman Party counters with constant reminders that country comes before party, that in politics a little passion energizes but unmarshaled passion corrupts, and that more people want to vote for civility than for venom.
...
David Brooks, "What Independents Want", November 2009
Liberals and conservatives each have their own intellectual food chains. They have their own think tanks to provide arguments, politicians and pundits to amplify them, and news media outlets to deliver streams of prejudice-affirming stories.
Independents, who are the largest group in the electorate, don’t have any of this. They don’t have institutional affiliations. They don’t look to certain activist lobbies for guidance. There aren’t many commentators who come from an independent perspective.
...
The most telling races this year were the suburban rebellions across the country. For example, in Westchester and Nassau counties in New York, Republican candidates came from nowhere to defeat entrenched Democratic county officials. In blue Pennsylvania, the G.O.P. won six out of seven statewide offices.
...
Why? What do these voters want?
...
According to Gallup, the percentage of Americans who believe that there is too much government regulation rose from 38 percent in 2008 to 45 percent in 2009. The percentage of Americans who want unions to have less influence rose from 32 percent to a record 42 percent.
Americans have moved to the right on abortion, immigration and global warming. Over the past seven months, the number of people who say government is doing too many things better left to business has jumped from 40 percent to 48 percent, according to a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll...
If I were a politician trying to win back independents, I’d say something like this: When I was a kid, I had a jigsaw puzzle of the U.S...
Independents support the party that seems most likely to establish a frame of stability and order...
For some people, the warriors of the populist right must be replaced by warriors of the populist left. For these people, Trump has revealed an ugly authoritarian tendency in American society that has to be fought with relentless fervor and moral clarity.
For others, it’s Trump’s warrior mentality itself that must be replaced. Warriors on one side inevitably call forth warriors on the other, and that just means more culture war, more barbarism, more dishonesty and more dysfunction.
The people in this camp we will call moderates. Like most of you, I dislike the word moderate. It is too milquetoast. But I’ve been inspired by Aurelian Craiutu’s great book “Faces of Moderation” to stick with this word, at least until a better one comes along.
Moderates do not see politics as warfare. Instead, national politics is a voyage with a fractious fleet. Wisdom is finding the right formation of ships for each specific circumstance so the whole assembly can ride the waves forward for another day.
...
According to Mr. Brooks, "moderates" just so happen to also not like it when Milo Yiannopoulos and Ann Coulter are denied their inalienable right to get paid for spewing white supremacist bile on campus, and "moderates" also cried themselves to sleep over a Google employee being fired for saying stupid shit, because "moderates" know these are merely the rest stops on the Road to Tyranny!
If you try to suppress those facts, by banning a speaker or firing an employee, then you are putting the goals of your cause, no matter how noble, above the search for truth. This is the path to fanaticism, and it always backfires in the end.
"Moderates" also hate monads!
Before they brutalize politics, warriors brutalize themselves. Instead of living out several identities — Latina/lesbian/gun-owning/Christian — that pull in different directions, they turn themselves into monads.
And there is more. So much more. And all of it is treacly and nauseating and aggressively and willfully oblivious to everything of political importance that has happened in America for the past four decades. Ending with this:
If you have elected a man who is not awed by the complexity of the world, but who filters the world to suit his own narcissism, then woe to you, because such a man is the opposite of the moderate voyager type. He will reap a whirlwind.
In fact, Democrats did elect a man who checks every one of Mr. Brooks' boxes. A modest, competent, incrementalist who Mr. Brooks' Republican Party spent eight straight years tirelessly trying to destroy at any price.
And then Mr. Brooks' Republican Party elected an unhinged, racist monster, because Republicans are unhinged racist monsters.
In case I was not clear enough the last 1,000 times I have written this, Mr. Brooks is not putting together galleons. Or assembling a fractious fleet. Or trying to jigger some other nautical cliche into just the right formation.
Mr. Brooks is once again trying to tinker together an armada of Both Siderist lifeboats our of the timbers of his last armada of Both Siderist lifeboats, which he constructed out of the timbers of the Both Siderism lifeboat armada before that. Mr. Brooks is doing the only thing he has ever done: salvaging his career and his reputation, and the careers and reputations of his Beltway cronies by creating a safe, Both Siderist place for all of them to hide from the consequence of their incompetence, fraud and years and years of Quisling complicity.
And once again there will be no one to stand their way but you and me kids.
In case you were wondering, is the White House Bureau Chief at The Washington Post and a paid political analyst for MSNBC & NBC News.
And every time President Stupid's spastic colon spasms, Mr. Rucker snaps a collar bone.
One side-note: As I was staggering back to the keyboard to write this. I looked up to see Bloody Bill Kristol. On MSNBC. Being interviewed by Brian Williams. On the Middle East, US foreign policy and war-making and where Lindsay Graham, John McCain and Holy Joe Liebermann all go to get their mani-pedis. All done with a completely straight face.
And there it was, happening once again: the media treating a monster like a long-lost lodge brother. Helping him ooze back into respectability. Happening in real time right out in public and no one -- no one -- but some scurrilous, disreputable bloggers are even going to mention it.
Nine months ago, ABC News' chief pedantic, finger-wagging scold and Both Siderist warrior political analyst was very busy lecturing the rest of us on what naughty, naughty (and ignorant) Americans we were for jumping to irresponsible conclusions about Trump voters:
The vast majority of trump voters aren't racists or sexists or mean spirited. Let's treat everyone with respect, and show each other love.
Have I mentioned that this is the guy ABC News pays for his deep and perceptive insights into the minds of the American electorate and state of American politics? And like the rest of his Beltway media running buddies, the words that Mr. Dowd is now struggling mightily not to say are: "Holy shit! The Left was right about the Right all along."
History will remember the Republicans who stick around
...
With only a few exceptions, however, GOP political leaders have been too timid to denounce the president and the reprehensible game of racial politics he’s playing. I think the corporate chief executives who bailed are making the right bet: History will remember who spoke out, who was complicit and who stood idly by...
Sorry, Gene -- may I call you Gene? -- but given the state of your profession today, this is nonsense.
Really dangerous nonsense.
Because perhaps you hadn't noticed, but thanks to the legions of flunkies, quislings and Both Siderist Republican-enablers that pollute your profession, "history" gets reset after every Republican atrocity.
For example. the minute the Bush Administration started feeding the Constitution through the wood-chipper, the GOP and the legions of flunkies, quislings and Both Siderist Republican-enablers that pollute your profession all agreed to suddenly forget all of the righteous pieties they spouted during the Clinton years about the moral imperative of holding presidents maximally, impeachably accountable -- even for little things like blowjobs -- no matter the cost.
For example. in 2009, Newt Gingrich -- one of the Founding Father's of Republican lying and hate-speech, and one of its most dedicated ongoing facilitators -- was also the most frequent honored guest on "Meet the Press". In fact, the Beltway media's open-ended dedication to blotting-out Gingrich's monstrous behavior and rehabilitating his public reputation over and over and over again is such a blatant stain on your profession that it has earned its own title: "The Gingrich Rules".
Of course, after the Bush Administration imploded, these same, Republican meatheads had the same-but-opposite problem: how the hell were they going to make their eight years of relentless cheering-leading the Bush Clusterfuck disappear?
And then, right on schedule, along came the Fake Tea Party.
And while that "History" thingie which was supposed "remember" their complicity and hold them accountable was busy chasing rainbows, the entire Bush Administration disappeared straight down the same memory hole into which the entire Clinton Administration had already been consigned. Suddenly all human history began on January 20, 2009 and nobody remembered nuthin' that happened before then.
And what do all of these massive crimes against democracy and history have in common? None of of them would have been possible or sustainable without the very active cooperation of those legions of flunkies, quislings and Both Siderist Republican-enablers that pollute your profession.
And the fallout from 20 years of media complicity in helping Republicans lie about who they are, what they they believe and what they have done has been catastrophic. The entire Republican Party from the leadership to the base is now addicted to the belief that, no matter how recklessly they behave or how much ruin they leave in their wake, thanks to the on-demand intercession of those legions of flunkies, quislings and Both Siderist Republican-enablers that pollute your profession, they will never be held accountable or have to pay any price for any of it.
And that, Gene, is why 63 million of these meatheads felt perfectly OK going to the polls in November and casting their vote for a lying, racist madman.
We were alerted to a video of a young man in Charlottesville, a self-proclaimed neo-Nazi, spewing hatred and bile. He was wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with the name of Johnny Cash, our father. We were sickened by the association.
Johnny Cash was a man whose heart beat with the rhythm of love and social justice. He received humanitarian awards from, among others, the Jewish National Fund, B’nai Brith, and the United Nations. He championed the rights of Native Americans, protested the war in Vietnam, was a voice for the poor, the struggling and the disenfranchised, and an advocate for the rights of prisoners. Along with our sister Rosanne, he was on the advisory board of an organization solely devoted to preventing gun violence among children. His pacifism and inclusive patriotism were two of his most defining characteristics. He would be horrified at even a casual use of his name or image for an idea or a cause founded in persecution and hatred. The white supremacists and neo-Nazis who marched in Charlottesville are poison in our society, and an insult to every American hero who wore a uniform to fight the Nazis in WWII. Several men in the extended Cash family were among those who served with honor.
Our dad told each of us, over and over throughout our lives, ‘Children, you can choose love or hate. I choose love.’
We do not judge race, color, sexual orientation or creed. We value the capacity for love and the impulse towards kindness. We respect diversity, and cherish our shared humanity. We recognize the suffering of other human beings, and remain committed to our natural instinct for compassion and service.
To any who claim supremacy over other human beings, to any who believe in racial or religious hierarchy: we are not you. Our father, as a person, icon, or symbol, is not you. We ask that the Cash name be kept far away from destructive and hateful ideology.
We Choose Love.
Rosanne Cash
Kathy Cash
Cindy Cash
Tara Cash
John Carter Cash
August 16, 2017
‘Not one of us can rest, be happy, be at home, be at peace with ourselves, until we end hatred and division.’ Rep. John Lewis
Also, for someone who wears his Catholicism so prominently on his sleeve, Mr. Dowd seems acutely averse to anything remotely resembling confession, repentance or atonement.
