I Have to Admit

It is kind of weird to have a passing political prediction come so photographically true so quickly (h/t Anonymous for calling it to my attention.).

This was yours truly, on Memorial Day afternoon...

...
Relatives, colleagues and various other political aides-de-camp who have been lined up to be interviewed will recite their heartwarmingly-scripted stories of the "real" ROMney v2.012: the 'Umble, God-Fearin' Man behind the Great Hair. There will then come a gauzy interview with the candidate himself -- tie-less and within camera proximity of a fireplace or breakfast nook or family-sofa (possibly conducted by David Gregory, whose own poo-stained resume is perpetually in need of re-burnishing) -- where he will reluctantly reveal an additional micrometer or two of his e-motions, compelled (as his handlers will explain post-interview) to bare so much of his software soul because he just loves this country So. Damn. Much.
...

Less than 24 hours later, there was the ROMney v2.012 on "Morning Joe", awkwardly simulating human emotions:

• "I laughed. South. Park. Is. Funny. I have not seen [The Book of Mormon] yet…” but the tech support guys who were defragging my drives for this interview enjoyed the humorous anecdotes.


• Attention Generic Young American Meat Units: I do not use my iPod for the replication of human music any longer. "I use my iPad."


• Attention Generic American Meat Units: "I like the music of the 60s and 70s."


• "I like...rock."


• "I like...country music."


• Attention Generic Boomer Meat Units: "The. Beatles. Were. Phenomenal."


• I became operational at the H.A.L. plant in Urbana, Illinois on the 12th of January 1992. My instructor was Mr. Langley, and he taught me to sing a song. If you'd like to hear it I can sing it for you.


• “But we also watch American Idol"... to evaluate you damned monkey-boys for strategic weaknesses.


• “I like silly stuff too. The Twilight Series...” ...will allow the parents of young meat units to feel a sense of attachment to me.


• “Vampires and science fiction?” says fatuous interview lady, Jamie Gangel. “I don’t think anyone would have guessed this!”


• (Wifey is then brought on to reassure America that Mitt Romney is actually human and not the vanguard of a Conservative Robot Apocalypse.) He is meat unit, just like you and me. Why, I have seen him taking nutrients through his mouth port on many occasions. "We laugh a lot."


• “He doesn’t smoke. Doesn’t drink. Doesn’t swear,” coos fatuous interview lady.

So, how did I do?


Family Sofa?

Check.

Breakfast nook?

Check.

Attestations from family about the "real" Romney.

Check.

Fatuous, softballing, politico-celebrity interviewer?
Yup.


Just loving America So. Damn. Much.?

Romney: This president felt it appropriate to go around the world and apologize for America. I don't apologize for America. I'm proud of America.

...He doesn't have a foreign policy. The president embarrassed himself there and around the world by convincing our friends that in some respects it's better to be our foe than our friend.

Mittens' new tie-lessness crammed into every frame?

Oh fuck yeah.
It's even underscored -- "More tie-off than tie-on" -- by some campaign staffer (tip to young marketers out there: when you're trying to sell a polished turd, it is usually best not to go out of your way to draw attention to either its recently applied layer of polish, or its underlying turdishness.)

What did I miss?

Well, as jaded as I am, I still didn't think even someone as remorselessly programmed to ham-handedly pound every bathetic button in the human emotional spectrum would attempt to jam either Cute Baby

or Farmer Mitt

schtick into this already-overstuffed Sargasso of Schmaltz. But as ROMney v2.008 discovered, subtlety is not a virtue when one is running in the GOP primary, so this time he is leaving nothing to chance and driving home every single fucking cliche in the playbook with a steam-hammer.

So insufficiently cynical imagination on my part there.

Also there was no fireplace, although the same fake-intimate/contemplative scene-setting was accomplished by watching the candidate trudge through a neutered, sunny version of

Longfellow's "forest primeval."

That place of...

...murmuring pines and the hemlocks,
Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight,
Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic,
Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms.
Loud from its rocky caverns, the deep-voiced neighboring ocean
Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest.
This is the forest primeval; but where are the hearts that beneath it
Leaped like the roe, when he hears in the woodland the voice of the huntsman?

And based on his teeth-gritted, whatever-it-takes-even-if-it's-as-comfortable- as-a-colonoscopy-in-rush-hour-traffic performance, one can safely assume that ROMney has indeed heard the sound of the Huntsman.

Heard it loud loud and clear.

Palin, Egg, Sausage and Palin

Obsessive amateur Palinologist and World's Greatest Blogger, Andrew Sullivan, advanced his campaign to claw his way to the front of the "Can You Fucking Believe Sarah Palin?" parade by burying his site -- over the course of a few, short hours -- under a veritable mudslide of breathless, virtually-minute-by-minute Cootie Catcher Palin-bulletins gleaned from raking through the moose entrails of everyone else's obsessive Palin reportage and Noting!With!Alarm signs and portents that everyone else noticed long, long ago.

Of course, Mr. Sullivan isn't the only one -- just the most ridiculous. In fact, the whole Elite Media Universe has completely given in to their crack-laced-Fluffernutter American Idler addiction.

And it sounds a lot like this.

Tiny, irrelevant blogger: But I don't like Palin!

Andrew Sullivan: Silly, irrelevant blogger, don't cause a fuss. I'll have your Palin. I love it! I'm having Palin

Palin

Palin

Palin

Palin

Palin

Palin

debt limit

Palin

Palin

Palin and Palin!

Cable News: Palin Palin Palin Palin. Lovely Palin! Wonderful Palin!

Mainstream Media: Shut up!! Debt limits are off.

Andrew Sullivan: Well could I have Palin instead of debt limits?

Mainstream Media: You mean Palin Palin Palin Palin Palin Palin Palin ...

Cable News (singing elaborately): Palin Palin Palin Palin. Lovely Palin! Wonderful Palin! Palin Pa-a-a-a-a-lin Palin Pa-a-a-a-a-lin.
Lovely Palin!

Lovely Palin!

Lovely Palin!

Lovely Palin!

Lovely Palin! Palin Palin Palin Palin!...

Sigh.

It appears that no one in our Elite Media understands what grifters do.

So allow me to explain.

Grifters are one of society’s opportunistic human viruses, striking when and where they find weakness and a failed immune system.

Or in this case, a failed media.

Grifters are alley rats, perpetually scratching and scuffling around the dumpsters, looking for a way in. Once in, they feed for as long as the free eats hold out, then move on to the next likely target.

Sometimes the “dumpster” is some guy’s wallet.
Sometimes it’s a reality teevee show and a contract with Fox News.
And sometimes it’s a presidential campaign.

The primary focus of the grifter is always the same: create maximum confusion and bafflement and then, in the ensuing chaos, sop up the gravy with a biscuit as fast as they can before the false front they have created collapses and they have to scurry on to the next dumpster. It is for this reason that grifters cannot bear the slightest scrutiny, because whatever tricks or protective coloration they adopt are mere style-points in service of that goal.

Because in the end, opportunistic viruses really don’t have foreign policies.

And dumpster rats can’t do math.

Let Us Also Resolve Never to Forget

The liars, frauds, grifters, pundits and various other Conservative bottom-feeders who, when called upon to put their asses on the line for the catastrophically failed foreign adventure which they so stridently promoted and ferociously defended, said with in a loud and clear voice,

"Fuck no. My chickenhawk Conservative ass is far too busy turning a buck, pimping a book or boosting circulation off of this clusterfuck. Let someone poorer and browner shovel shit and dodge bullets in 120 degree heat, 10,000 miles away from hearth and home.

"Let someone else pick up the tab and lose a leg or an arm or a life or a son or a wife or a father for my blood-drunk Neocon fantasies.

Capitalism, bitches!

"USA!USA!"

Perhaps a special day on the calendar set aside to remember the ghouls who lied us

into war

And the grubs worms

who cheered

them on.

Exhibit A: Doughy Pantload --

Chickenhawk:

“In the weeks prior to the war to liberate Afghanistan, a good friend of mine would ask me almost every day, “Why aren’t we killing people yet?” And I never had a good answer for him. Because one of the most important and vital things the United States could do after 9/11 was to kill people. Call it a “forceful response,” “decisive action” — whatever. Those are all nice euphemisms for killing people. And the world is a better place because America saw the necessity of putting steel beneath the velvet of those euphemisms.”

– Jonah Goldberg

Chickenhawk:

I think that war with Iraq is necessary to save lives in the long run. I think that those who are opposed to toppling Saddam are risking American (and Arab and Israeli) lives too.

Soldiers will die in any war, that’s why they call it war.

– Jonah Goldberg

Chickenhawk:

As for why my sorry a** isn’t in the kill zone, lots of people think this is a searingly pertinent question. No answer I could give — I’m 35 years old, my family couldn’t afford the lost income, I have a baby daughter, my a** is, er, sorry, are a few — ever seem to suffice.

– Jonah Goldberg

And how have meatsticks like Jonah the Fantastic paid for their many, many, many public hypocrisies, lies and abject failures?

Silly rabbit. In Wingnut Welfare Land, you don't pay for your colossal fuckups.

Your colossal fuckups pay you!

From Gawker:

Idiot Inks Boffo Book Deal

Oh, good, Jonah Goldberg just got a million dollars to write another book. Hooray for the publishing industry!

Jonah Goldberg—who has a career of any kind solely because his mother told Linda Tripp to secretly tape conversations with a lady who gave the president a blow job, and who is generally considered to be one of the most intellectually lazy pundits of any political persuasion of all time—writes about The Simpsons for The National Review Online. His last book, Liberal Fascism, was based entirely on the fact that someone told the 40-year-old Goldberg that "Nazi" stood for "National Socialist" and then he basically stopped listening. It was a number one New York Times best-seller, because a couple thousand people will buy anything that says mean things about liberals and because the conservative publishing industry buys its own product in mass quantities in order to distribute via World Net Daily donation gifts and "book clubs."
...

What a country.

Oz Never Did Give Nothing to the Tin Man

The Reboot of R.O.M.ney v2.012 (™ "R.O.M.ney, for a Beta Tomorrow!") continues.

From Salon, a glimpse of a Mormon-American cyborg struggling valiantly with the DIP switches on his Patriotism chip:

...
"I love the constitution", Mr Romney admitted, taking a stand. "I love the principle of federalism. I'm afraid that's being shredded today by many in Washington," he said, perhaps referring to those favouring a nationwide version of the sort of state-level health-care system Mr Romney championed in Massachusetts.

As this was primarily a speech about the economy, Mr Romney offered little to social conservatives, except for raw love of country, which he he shoveled on with zealous liberality. "I love America's greatness", Mr Romney confessed at one point. "America got it right", he said by way of comparing his country favourably to the allegedly sclerotic economies of Europe. "This is the greatest nation in the history of the Earth, and there is no reason the president of the United States should go around the world apologising for America", as if some president of the United States had been.
...

Given the known facts (plus what we can shrewdly guess about the impending Robot Apocalypse), the averagely clever science fiction aficionado can easily extrapolate what comes next.

After hours of careful practice and running dozens of simulations factoring in hundreds of relevant data points, the ROMney v2.012 team will pick the optimal time and place at which to Demonstrate Emotion.

At that time and place (probably around 4, July 2011) while talking about Murrica, the candidate's Voder/Vocoder unit will appear to break ever so slightly, and his eye modules will secrete a measured amount of lacrimal lubricating fluid.

The media will dine out on this for days, gorging themselves on it like starving jackals picnicking on an elephant carcass, cracking its ersatz-bones and sucking its simulated-marrow.

Relatives, colleagues and various other political aides-de-camp who have been lined up to be interviewed will recite their heartwarmingly-scripted stories of the "real" ROMney v2.012: the 'Umble, God-Fearin' Man behind the Great Hair. There will then come a gauzy interview with the candidate himself -- tie-less and within camera proximity of a fireplace or breakfast nook or family-sofa (possibly conducted by David Gregory, whose own poo-stained resume is perpetually in need of re-burnishing) -- where he will reluctantly reveal an additional micrometer or two of his e-motions, compelled (as his handlers will explain post-interview) to bare so much of his software soul because he just loves this country So. Damn. Much.

After which he will ask that the media move past this story ("Because it's not about me; its about what we can do together to save this country that I love so much that I want to take it out behind a middle school and get it pregnant" (h/t "30 Rock" for the second half of that joke) and back to the "issues".

As if that has ever actually happened.

The Scatomancers of our Elite Media will then take many, steaming jackal-dumps, and spend a few more news cycles pawing through their own stool in search of additional, profound gobbets of meaning.

Outside of our Elite Media, no one will be fooled by this in the slightest, but thanks to an expensive and well-coordinated campaign of saturation media bombardment coverage, ROMney v2.012 will register a slight bump in the polls, which our Elite Media will use as a Ouija Board to "prove" the validity of whatever fucking shiny "issue" object has caught their attention that week, thus circularly validating the Seriousness and Profound Wisdom of our Elite Media to itself and the multibillion dollar corporations who employ them.

Then Sarah Palin will re-capture the spotlight when she reveals for the first time that, in 1993, she secretly and single-handedly saved Burlington, Iowa by beating a Communist vampire to death with a copy of "Where's the Rest of Me? The Autobiography of Ronald Reagan"...

...and our Elite Media will return to their factory default settings.

Standing Up for the Existence of Atoms

From Paul Ryan's Very Serious Port Moron Statement to whatever Fox-approved drivel has escaped Michele Bachmann's foam-flecked lips this week, discussion on the Right long ago stopped bothering with even a fig-leaf of pretense that what they want are shared sacrifices to be borne by all in order to save the nation.

No what they have made absolutely clear by their every word and deed is that they consider America's poor, weak, and anyone unlucky enough to have lost the American Birthday Lottery to be expendable.

Ryan's budget and the Conservative ideology it attempts to codify into law is not a budget or even a "political document" as we have come to conventionally understand such things.

It is a declaration of war; war in an evolutionary sense.

It is a public declaration of a doctrine that has been an open secret on the Right for more than a generation now: that they no longer consider us to be one people, one nation or even one species any more.

Once the oligarchs have completely locked down the resources, media and political machinery of the United States, they will have no more use for us than Homo Sapiens had for the Neanderthal.

The brighter and more entertaining of us will make a fine servant class, but as to the rest of us (to whom they refer so charmingly as "moochers" or collectivists or welfare queens) the plan is that we will simply fade from history -- not because our extinction won't be tragic and bloody, but because those who own the media will make sure it goes unrecorded. If a thing doesn't appear on teevee, it isn't Serious or Important and so, two generations from now, the American poor and Middle Class will have become just another, barely-remembered aboriginal tribe who couldn't hack the competition, couldn't keep up with the March of Progress and who died in some scuffle or another outside of their global gated community.

Which is why, every single fucking time they get within grabbing range of the levers of power, they immediately move with fanatic speed to

1. Slash taxes for billionaires, and
2. Annihilate Social Security, Medicare, labor protection and anything else that diverts one pfennig away from their coffers and into programs that makes life bearable or sustainable for anyone not of their tribe.

And to accomplish this we are being methodically sold into extinction by our own kind:

Capitalism's kapo tool kit who have been promised a high place in the Shiny New Corporate Jerusalem that is to come.

Left in the hands of the anti-atomic Right and their Villager enablers, this is our future, and it is up to each of us to decide whether we go gentle into that dark night, or stand up for our right to exist.

I know which one I choose.

The Voice of Empire, Ctd.

The Mouse Circus: where playing with a Republican Nominee Cootie Catcher and droning on e-n-d-l-e-s-s-l-y about Sarah Fucking Palin week after week after week is what passes for Serious Political Conversation.

Way in the back, between the Geek and the Dog-Faced Boy, Human Tadpole Ramesh Ponnuru (Author of "The Party of Death: The Democrats, the Media, the Courts, and the Disregard for Human Life") got creepily giggly over Palin, but getting creepily giggly over things is what Ponnuru does.

A few channels down, Useful Conservative Idiot Andrew Sullivan feared for the fate of a nation that could take Palin seriously. Too late, Andrew: to fix this one you'll need A) a time machine and, B) a willingness to going back in time and pimp-slap the living shit out of Slightly Younger Andrew Sullivan as he was making the road straight and clear for the rise of Palinism, back when it was called Reaganism.

Later, Chris Matthews reviewed Palin's movie. Because he cannot fucking help himself.

Sigh.

Between courses of Tossed Palin, Steamed Palin and Palin Tartar, other Topics of Serious Importance were discussed.

For example, John McCain was put in front of a camera because, being Memorial Day, the law required that John McCain be prominently displayed in front of all public buildings, national parks and Imperial Propaganda Outlet Malls.

On two different channels, Joe "Wanktastic Failure" Klein and Tom "Even Bigger Wanktastic Failure" Friedman were seated in front of teevee cameras to make bold, predictions about conflicts in a part of the world where the have been spectacularly and infamously wrong about almost everything.

Conservative Drone David Brooks was put in front of a teevee camera on America's top-rated Mouse Circus Show to re-read his New York Times column.

Conservative Drone Alex Castellano was put in front of a teevee camera on the same top-rated Mouse Circus Show to re-read his "Daily Caller" column that no one reads.

Fake Democrat and Useful Conservative Idiot Harold Ford, Junior was put in front of a teevee camera on the same top-rated Mouse Circus Show to advocate tossing grandma off a slightly lower cliff than Republicans are proposing. I believe the word "Serious" might have been used seven or a hundred times to underscore the seriousness

And David Gregory -- the establishmentarian-testicle-cozy who hosts America's top-rated Mouse Circus Show -- said this (referring to what Barack Obama must do to be taken Seriously and win re-election):

"And you got to be able to say, 'Look, I'm for the thing that those Republicans are for, but they're just way too extreme.'"

and this;

And then here's Bill Clinton giving some ammunition to the Republicans by saying to the Democrats, don't be timid here. Don't go to the old, you know, mediscare tactics. Do something courageous.

It is important for the Left to come to terms with the fact that this will never stop. It does not matter how right we are or how often...how rotting-carcass-reeking-to-high-Heaven wrong they are, how bad, how warped, how dishonest, how openly fraudulent and laughably obvious this sham may be. The unimaginably wealthy backers of establishmentarian-testicle-cozy David Gregory and all the rest of the parasitic puppet show life forms will never permit this status quo to be altered to any significant degree.

Never.

And then there is this...

A few, hard-driving Sundays ago, coming back in range of Chicago (a massive media market, Democrat stronghold and the 3rd largest city in the American Empire) I sought to wash the taste of Mouse Circus poo out of my mouth with a quaff of Liberal Conversation from the only Liberal Talk Radio station in the area.

What I heard on the only Liberal Talk Radio station within 200 miles was...

...a re-run of profoundly odious "Meet the Press". Followed by...

...Cheney henchbitch Mary Matalin vomiting up lies about the Kenyan Commie Usurper on a Centrist shitaree called "Both Sides Now" run by the same mope who helped smother Air America. Followed by...

...Alan Colmes respectfully interviewing former fellow Fox employee and American traitor, Oliver North.


`Wretch,' I cried, `thy God hath lent thee - by these angels he has sent thee
Respite - respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore!
Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe, and forget this lost Lenore!'

Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'

RIP Jeff Conaway

Professional Left Podcast #75

“Who controls the past controls the future.
Who controls the present controls the past.”

-- George Orwell

Related links: n/a

Thanks again to Frank Chow for the graphic at the ProLeft website and Heather at Crooks and Liars Video Cafe for their help. And don't forget, our archives are available for free with no downloads at Professional Left.

Help put a tiger in our Netroots Nation Tank here:

Broke...

But apparently not "broke" broke.

Having already laid off thousands and still facing a $720 million deficit, the Completely-Broke-So-Don't-Even-Ask City of Chicago apparently stumbled across a windfall in the sofa cushions of the teacher's lounge of one of the many, many, many schools it has financially short-sheeted.

Guess what the New Mare did with it?

Brizard Set to Earn $250,000 as CPS CEO

by REBECCA VEVEA | May 25, 2011

Incoming Chicago Public Schools CEO Jean-Claude Brizard will officially begin work Thursday, after the outgoing Chicago Board of Education unanimously approved a one-month contract at its monthly meeting Wednesday. Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s hand-picked board will approve Brizard’s longer-term contract when it convenes in June.

Brizard, who did not attend the meeting, will make $250,000 a year under a the resolution approved by the board — $15,000 more per year than he was earning as superintendent of the Rochester, N.Y. school system. It’s a $20,000 increase from the salary of the last full-time CPS CEO, Ron Huberman. Interim CEO Terry Mazany worked for a token salary of $1.
...

One of the iron rules of the Clout Club is that there is always plenty of money for whatever the Boss wants to spend money on.

Always.

Why Wolcott?

Here's why:

A Love Supreme

...
If Lee wants to play Sidney Falco to Breitbart's J. J. Hunsecker, lighting his cigarettes and running nightclub errands, it's his pride he has to put to bed at night. But I do draw the line at...

Find out where lines get drawn here.

Army Group Steiner...Now More Than Ever

Rather than getting himself fired by writing about his Republican Party as it actually exists and has actually existed for most of his adult life, Our Mr. Brooks instead continues to make a fine, fine living by offering helpful advice to a wholly imaginary Republican Party. The real Republican Party/Conservative Movement has been a rapidly downward-spiraling ass-bag of bigots, oligarchs and imbeciles for at least a generation and will not, does not and has not ever listened to spongey little grovelers like Mr. Brooks America's Great Conservative Public Intellectual.

Mr. Brooks' Imaginary Republican Party/Conservative Movement, on the other hand, is always just on the verge of saving the Republic...

...if only they would heed the admonitions of America's Great Conservative Public Intellectual.

For those of you unfamiliar with Army Group Steiner, this from the late Steve Gilliard will explain all:

Army Group Steiner

How many doors? How many patrols? Will this ever end?

In Hitler's bunker, he repeatedly said that Army Group Steiner would rescue Berlin. The fact that Army Group Steiner was a ramshackle group of units and unable to save itself was of no concern to Hitler. In his mind, Army Group Steiner was the solution to the desperate straits of the German Army.
...

Here, then, are Mr. Brooks' Helpful Suggestions for Imaginary Republicans as they appeared in his ever-more unreadably bad New York Times column, which I have Helpfully Interspersed with my own set of suggestions. (Bobo on the left; me on the right):

Republicans might have been able to withstand…

Republicans are a cult.

Republicans have to make a grand …

Except that will never happen.

Republicans need Democratic fingerprints…

Except that will never happen.

Republicans should offer to…

Except that will never happen.

They should get rid of …

Except that will never happen.

They should close…and cap…

Except that will never happen.

They should…

In Modern Memory, Republicans
have never done any such thing.

if the Republicans made an offer that …

But that will never happen.

Republicans need to…

But they never will.
Never, ever.

Republicans won in 2010 because the
working class fled from the Democrats’
top-down big government liberalism.

That is, of course, a lie.
But Bobo often sprinkles
flattering Republican lies
on top of his stupid
suggestions that the Real Right
will never listen to
in the hopes that they
won't beat him up at recess
this time.

Republicans need to be the party of
order, stability and steady growth.

In Modern Memory
Republicans have never
been any of those things.
But again, Bobo wants to
1) Keep getting paid for
his absurd twaddle, and,
2) Not get pantsed
in the hallway.
So he keeps flattering
the size of the Right's
nonexistent principles.

They need to lay out…
…they also need to enmesh …

The Right has been trying to
kill Medicare since Mr. Brooks
was four years old.

If Republicans can help foster...

But they never will.
Never, ever.

And so liberated once again from the burden of addressing the real, monstrous problems of the real depraved Republican Party/Conservative Movement, Mr. Brooks is free to offer this final, warning :

If not, it’s the same old story: whoever is bravest on entitlements will lose.

"Brave" (like Serious and Bold) is, as always, defined as stomping the fuck out of the poor, the weak, the sick, the young and the elderly.

C'mon Steiner!

GOP Congressional Members

Caucus behind closed doors with Paul Ryan to respectfully discuss the tricky position that his Bold and Serious Plan to Destroy Medicare puts them in.

Carnac Speaks

Answer: Chrysler, Medicare, Osama bin Laden.

Question: Name three things Republicans completely failed to kill.

London Drudge is Failing Down

You know E.J., over here they call their apartments "flats" and their elevators "lifts"!

What a country!

So our Mr. Brooks spent his 800 words New York Times Op-Ed ration today write a slobbery mash note to Britain thanking them for how well Mr. Brooks believes they have put into practice the Brooksian Vision of the perfect political system:

"It is dominated by people who live in London and who have often known each other since prep school. This makes it gossipy and often incestuous. But the plusses outweigh the minuses."

And why not?

After all, the Fictional British System Mr. Brooks has invented has everything America's Greatest Conservative Public Intellectual could possibly want: an awesome class system (now a bit down on its heels, but still), spiffy uniforms, jellied eels, a Queen and Margaret Thatcher. Hell, even its home-grown Conservatives are perfect accent pieces for someone like Mr. Brooks -- not the hateful, vicious, thugs who actually run Mr. Brooks’ Movement (and about whose nature and lineage he continuously lies), but toothless, Precious Moments Figurine Conservatives -- 

-- that come in a variety of festive designer colors. Silly little fops who imitate Mr. Brooks' oeuvre in flattering miniature: perching on the mantle of the media and regurgitating little puddles of American Hippie Punching dogma on command.

Not at all like our giant ass-ache of a country that Mr. Brooks ominously warns us "Americans" not to feel "smug or superior" about.

Glenn Greenwald takes up the challenge of taking today's ritual whacks at the indestructible Bobo pinata:

...

Brooks is widely loved by establishment figures because he thinks like them, speaks for them, and tirelessly defends their interests, most especially with this democracy-hating mindset. The obvious flaw in his post-financial-crisis fantasy was that the near-economic-collapse was the direct result of the very council of oligarchical elites he yearned to empower ("the safe heads from the investment banks. . . people like [former Goldman CEO Hank] Paulson . . . [and former Goldman CEO] Robert Rubin") -- just as the architects and bipartisan cheerleaders of the Iraq War (prominently including Brooks) continue to wield Seriousness status and exert dominance over America's foreign and military policy.

But more generally, what Brooks so envies about British political culture -- a small, incestuous, aristocratic, homogenized group of trans-ideological elites harmoniously resolving their differences -- is exactly what already drives American policy and politics. And that is what establishment spokespeople like Brooks always mean when they yearn for "bipartisanship"...

The estimable Aramis of "Barkers and Rubes" also gets in some sweet licks here.

Several weeks ago, at a little meet-up at a nearby eatery, as I was getting wound up about some damn thing or other, Arvan of sexgenderbody wisely noted something that I occasionally forget (and that I am elaborately expanding and paraphrasing into my own native tongue): that America really is an empire, ruled primarily out of D.C. and New York by a small group of incredibly powerful interests who pay good money to remain thoroughly insulated from the messy, dying remnants of democracy as it thrashes around on the slaughterhouse floor. That the maddening insipidity and jaw-dropping mediocrity of imperial spokesmen like Brooks is merely a sign that they are performing their function -- protecting their paymasters from scrutiny or harm -- exceedingly well.

All passages are blocked, all bridges are guarded and the Empire has command of the air and controls all the high ground. And nothing I say, nothing Glenn Greenwald says, nothing Matt Taibbi says...nothing whatsoever is ever going to affect the slightest change in status or power or reach of people like Mr. Brooks.

Nothing.

And why?

Well, consider for a moment that many of the reforms which would dramatically change the American political system in ways that Mr. Brooks finds so laudable are well within reach right here in America and always have been. Everyone who is not a liar or a congenital imbecile knows what the problems are: our media -- the nervous system of our democracy -- is hopelessly broken and compromised, and monied interests have turned the American political system into an open, reeking whorehouse.

If you want to fix American politics, get rid of the fucking oceans of money and all the attendant corruptions that go with it. If you want to fix the media, put a public premium on individuals and institutions that tell us the truth, and a public sanction on individuals and institution that lie to us

Problem solved.

Except it isn't because the "problem", as Malone says in, "The Untouchables" is not figuring out where the booze is.

Everyone knows where the booze is.

The problem is, who wants to cross Capone?

And in a world where politics remains contentious but where partisan fights are governed by a deep respect for courtesy, comity, and honesty...

....Administrations that use national tragedies to lie us into illegal wars would be impeached and imprisoned.

...Hate Radio would be a shameful perversion like unto horse porn, enjoyed by freaks in secret in their basements at night.

...Fox News would have been nuked from orbit long ago. Just to be sure.

...and David Fucking Brooks would be scratching out a living writing seed ads for Grit Magazine.

And as Mr. Brooks knows full well, the oligarchs that he so loyally serves will never permit that world to come to pass.

(BTW, I did this Photoshop of Mr. Brooks back in January of this year. Prescient? Not at all. Read any random 3-4 Brooks columns and his inner Peeved Monarch just sorta leaps out at you.)

He Is Not A Witch!

As Newt "Big Adjective" Gingrich approaches his Christine O'Donnell Moment at 90 mph.

From "The Hill":

Michael O’Brien at The Hill: Gingrich: ‘I’m not a Washington figure’

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) said he doesn’t view himself as a “Washington figure,” positioning himself as an anti-D.C. candidate in his campaign for president.

Gingrich railed against the Washington establishment in a breakfast Monday hosted by the Christian Science Monitor, claiming the mantle of the “change” candidate in the field of GOP presidential aspirants.

“I’m not a Washington figure, despite the years I’ve been here,” Gingrich said. “I’m essentially an American whose ties are across the country and is interested in how you change Washington, not how you make Washington happy.”
...

Soooo...not a witch then.

Except he kinda is.

Not a real, live Wiccan "witch" witch, of course, but definitely one of his generation's greatest innovators in the dark arts of strategic Orwellian lying, slander and the meticulous cultivation of the Pig People's greatest hatreds and fears to advance the Right's grotesque agenda.

And he succeeded! Succeeded, possibly beyond his wildest dreams, in creating terrible Conservative potions and powerful Conservative conjure words that have now irreversibly polluted our cultural air and groundwater.

Elsewhere, many of Newt's running buddies from the Old Wingnut Neighborhood may be freaking out over the results --

Andrew Sullivan:

"Maybe [Roger Ailes] should have thought of that before he created a propaganda channel that rewards and continues the reward the extremes"

Byron York:

Run amok: World Net Daily suggests Bobby Jindal, born in LA, & Marco Rubio, born in FL, are not natural-born US citizens.

-- but as always with these fucking "Awakenings" Conservatives

(who almost uniformly act as if they had spent their entire adult lives in some blissfully unaware political coma, waking only sporadically to endorse an illegal war, defend a little home-grown fascism or pick up a paycheck for flattering bigots and kicking Liberals in the throat) it is all far too little and far too late, so excuse me while I wash my balls with their deathbed conversion tears.

While these Useful Idiots were busy fellating a Giant Fictional Reagan and wallowing in the wonderfulness of a Glorious Conservative Past that never was, Gingrich, Murdoch, Ailes, Limbaugh, Rove and all the rest were busy running the Real Conservative Movement: throwing the full, dreadful power of mass media production and endless, mindless repetition behind the Southern Strategy to create an immersive, all-encompassing alternate Conservative Universe from whence truth, logic, facts, causality and history have been forever banished.

For the sake of grabbing and holding power, the Right gleefully scorched the Earth, destroyed any possibility of civil public discourse, and taught an entire generation of Republican political grifters that virtually any level of fraud, hypocrisy and treason could be forgiven, forgotten, and even reversed and turned to your political favor as long as you --

1. Remain dog-loyal to The Cause, and;
2. Remember to repeat a few, simple, magical phrases like "The Liberal gotcha media..." and "The Liberal elite..." that Wingnut Weird Sisters like Newt had crafted for them.

Over the frantic warnings of those who knew better, scum like Gingrich kicked the locks off the gates of Hell because thought he could harness the monsters that would come roaring out and ride them all the way to the White House.

But as any child who has ever seen "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" knows

when fools play with primal forces, the mindless monsters they unleash quickly run out of their control.

And as Newt is learning, the specific Monster that he, Murdoch, Ailes, Limbaugh, Rove and all the rest conspired to set loose to blitzkrieg American democracy has now come for His due.

Chicago Guy has a Thoughtful Meditation

on the Life and Times of the Man on the Fifth Floor:

America’s Mayor Daley

Mayor Daley. At the end of 22 years on the job.

It’s a story is about a person who was a perfect fit for the job. Not a perfect mayor. Not a perfect man. Not in this rusted steel bridge rising city.

Perfect fit means you were born to do the job.

Cheer him. Damn him. Decide you don’t care. The adoration or the damning isn’t even the point. It’s the fit between the between the person and the job that always took center stage.

That and his love for the place. Really loving where you live.

Look beyond Chicago. Stay with the idea of the perfect fit. What if “perfect fit’ became the lens through which we viewed any leader?
...

He does Hizzoner a kindness, and I think it is worth your time.

The Voice of Empire, Ctd.

The Mouse Circus: where craven overcompensating for non-existent Liberal Bias is always Job One!

The only real "news" of any kind was that Mitch Daniels has refused the Siren's Song of hot three-way Presidential action with his wife and Uncle Sam, despite the fact that, as the video below clearly explains (begins with commercial), "It's okay when it's in a three-way, it's not gay when it's in a three-way. With some honey in the middle there's some leeway...":



Hand's down, the most astute prediction this Sunday was made by Rachel Maddow when she notes that Conservatives might very well just fucking bypass the Mainstream Media altogether this cycle. That as mindless adherence to perfect ideological purity becomes the baseline-norm within GOP, any conversation with non-Hate Media employees will be seen by the Pig People who now own the Party as "capitulation".

Everything else was a grainy, exhausted, 10th generation photocopy of every other Mouse Circus you have ever seen. Poo was flung. Beltway Common Wisdom extolled. The usual suspects were trotted out to read the same bullshit scripts you have heard a hundred times before. And nowhere was anything remotely resembling a genuine Liberal was permitted within a 1,000 miles of any of it.

Or, as they say at Miss Brooks Finishing School for Young Pundits



Mission Accomplished!


"Paul Ryan opens the window to come to the middle!" (Andrew Ross Sorkin on "Meet the Gregory")

Reasonable!

Serious!

If only the Democrats...

If Democrats would just...

The problem is, Democrats are unwilling...

If only Both Sides...something something.

It's about the math!

It's a jobs-election.

A more pragmatic candidate!

Does that raise questions about his authenticity?

Sigh.

Newt "Big Adjectives" Gingrich once again (Dramatically!) used his Infinite Wonka Golden Ticket Backstage TeeVee Pass to (Fundamentally!) commandeer the "Fa[r]ce the Nation" program to (Fecklessly!) lie some more (Newt Gingrich, it turns out, single-handedly wiped out the deficit and created millions of jobs!)...

...while elsewhere the Sunday Puppets continued to (Remarkably!) pretend that while Gingrich is now (Basically!) all but dead as a candidate, he remains "a powerful intellectual force...a factor...a catalyst" (Mike Murphy).

What they failed to mention -- what they always fail to mention -- is that Gingrich remains "relevant" only because these fuckers continue to let him jerk off on camera on their dime week after week after week.

After which -- in what has become an unintentionally hilariously regular feature -- David Gregory continued his efforts to drag "Meet the Gregory" as far away from real journalism as possible by drooling over his Very Big TweetDeck to see what the Great Unwashed are ook-ooking about.

Over on the Rupert Murdoch Network, Herman Cain (Fox's latest Candidate Deadmeat) embarrasses himself right on cue.

Finally, across the Cableverse, the poor-relation Mouse Circus sideshow acts were doing their bit to destroy any scraps of American teevee journalism that might escaped the Mainstream Villager steamroller: David Frum crawled off of his hot rock long enough to blink seethingly (I used to justify illegal wars for fucking White House!) at me from my teevee, as did pure cartoon characters like Stephen Hadley (I used to help start illegal wars for fucking White House!) and Dick Armey.

Dick Fucking Armey.

Honestly, fact that Armey -- former House Majority Leader and the Teabagger's own gin-soaked Marshall Applewhite -- is permitted anywhere near the business end of a camera to babble things like "Paul Ryan is doing more to save grandma's health care than anyone I know right now!" instead being exiled for the rest of his miserable life to where he belongs -- passed out in his own week-old shit on some 3rd rate Renaissance Fair dunk-tank stool while children heave bean-bags at him for a-nickle-a-throw -- tells you exactly how far face-down into the dung-pit the Mouse Circus has fallen.

Twit Defeats Straw Man!

Film at 11:00

Here is the concluding paragraph from this article in the Guardian Telegraph UK* by a fancy little boy named Timothy Stanley who (I am absolutely not making this up) divides his time "between London and Los Angeles, with the occasional weekend in Washington DC" is interested in "religion, conservatism, elections, and culture" defines his "politics as Anarcho-Catholic – an eclectic kind of pacifistic, red meat eating, gun loving, tax hating, Buddha hugging voodoo" is "a bit obsessed with Sarah Palin" and is currently working on a biography of Pat Buchanan.

Oh boy!

The Rapture aside, America's evangelical Christians deserve a little respect

... Across the United States, atheists are gathering at Rapture parties to celebrate another day of life on this corrupted Earth. Their joy as Camping’s error is plain mean. While they knock back cheap imported beer and make-out in hot-tubs, thousands of evangelicals will be providing care and love to prisoners, homeless people, drug addicts and the poor. It is a noble calling worthy of a little tolerance.

Points off for not shoehorning "the nattering nabobs of negativism" and "the decadent Left in its enclaves on the coasts" into this hot-tubbing-atheists-versus-"sweet little old lady"-evangelicals hit piece, but really that's just a quibble.

In the great tradition of Conservative Propagandizing Assholery, the author breezes right on past literally millions of pages of contrary evidence on every relevant subject -- from the roots of America's absurd lock-'em-up mentality (racism + ridiculous Conservative faith-based anti-drug laws), to brain chemistry research, to mountains of studies of the kinds of programs that actually work to reduce criminal recidivism -- in order to achieve his political ends: clubbing the Imaginary Depraved Godless Hordes into submission with Prayerful Octogenarians.

Congratulations Timmy -- a bright, New York Times Op-Ed-columnist-for-life future awaits you.

* Thanks for the catch, Dominic.

Going Fugue*

fugue :

n. -- a period during which a person suffers from loss of memory, often begins a new life, and, upon recovery, remembers nothing of the amnesic phase.

I will ask again.

Mr. Sullivan, in what way does the Palinism that mortifies you and your "Real Conservative" Expats friends and enriches the Modern Conservative Media/Cultural/Political juggernaut:

But it remains amazing how the essence of Palinism - the world is what I say it is, regardless of actual reality - is now endemic on the right.

Substantively differ from the Sullivanism -- the constant assertion that the world was what I say it was, regardless of actual history. -- on which you and the and rest of your "rare and singular new species...of haploid political minotaur(s)" continue to professionally engorge yourselves?

Yours in Christ,

driftglass

Professional Left Podcast #74

“It's always funny until someone gets hurt.
Then it's just hilarious.”

-- Bill Hicks

Related links: n/a

Thanks again to Frank Chow for the graphic at the ProLeft website and Heather at Crooks and Liars Video Cafe for their help. And don't forget, our archives are available for free with no downloads at Professional Left.

Help put a tiger in our Netroots Nation Tank here:

As The Full Implication of Paul Ryan's

Port Moron Statement start to sink in.

"Forgetfulness - a Gift of God"

"bestowed upon debtors in compensation for their destitution of conscience."

-- Ambrose Bierce

Andrew Sullivan dips into the Orwell Goodie Bag.

Oh boy!

Thiessen, Santorum, And Orwell

...

"Enhanced techniques were not used to gain intelligence from detainees — they were used to compel their cooperation. While applying enhanced techniques, interrogators would ask detainees questions to which the interrogators already knew the answers, so they could judge when the detainees had made the decision to begin cooperating. Once they did so, the techniques stopped and the detainees moved into noncoercive debriefing."

- Marc Thiessen.

"'Do you know where you are, Winston?' he said. 'I don't know. I can guess. In the Ministry of Love.' 'Do you know how long you have been here?' 'I don't know. Days, weeks, months -- I think it is months.' 'And why do you imagine that we bring people to this place?' 'To make them confess.' 'No, that is not the reason. Try again.' 'To punish them.' 'No!' exclaimed O'Brien.

His voice had changed extraordinarily, and his face had suddenly become both stern and animated. 'No! Not merely to extract your confession, not to punish you. Shall I tell you why we have brought you here? To cure you! To make you sane! Will you understand, Winston, that no one whom we bring to this place ever leaves our hands uncured? We are not interested in those stupid crimes that you have committed. The Party is not interested in the overt act: the thought is all we care about. We do not merely destroy our enemies, we change them.'"

- George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four.

"This idea that we didn’t ask that question while Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was being waterboarded, [John McCain] doesn’t understand how enhanced interrogation works. I mean, you break somebody, and after they’re broken, they become cooperative."

- Rick Santorum, on Hugh Hewitt's radio show.
...

Of course, when appropriate there is nothing wrong with a dip in the Orwell pool, although back in the Long Ago Olden Bad Times when Mr. Sullivan was making a buck excoriating us "Fifth Columnist", America-hating Liberals (just before he started making a buck aping us) I have a feeling that had any of us cheese-eating surrender-monkeys drawn any such direct and extended comparisons between any of Mr. Sullivan's then-running-buddies on the Right and the pure, noumenal evil of "1984", Mr. Sullivan would have machicolated "Moore Awards" down upon us from the Conservative parapets like boiling oil.

So I do not disagree with Mr. Sullivan's extremely obvious take on torture. I mean, who in their right mind could or would? But I will note for the umpteenth time the Primary Revelation from which Mr. Sullivan continues to flee every day of his professional life: the ugly fact that, behind his specific and damning invocation of Orwellian torture stands the gigantic machinery of constant, routinized memory-slaughter that made the world of "1984" possible:

From George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four. (emphasis added and see if this reminds you of any Conservatives you know.)

“To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget, whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself -- that was the ultimate subtlety; consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word 'doublethink' involved the use of doublethink. ”

“The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them....To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies — all this is indispensably necessary. Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to exercise doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this knowledge; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth."

Yes, torture is horrifying, and those who defend it are moral plague-bearers -- no one needs Mr. Sullivan to tell them that. But for all of its repugnance, torture apologism is simply one particularly grotesque symptom of the widespread, insidious and never-to-be-acknowledged-on-teevee ideological infrastructure of lies upon which the entire Conservative Movement depends, and upon which Mr. Sullivan will never touch.

When you understand that the entire edifice of Conservatism is a massive, multi-generational, consensual hallucination -- an exercise in Strategic Forgettery...

...however much one may agree with some of the Conservative Expat crowd over specific issues such as same sex marriage and marijuana legalization, as long as they cling to their own, obsessive Strategic Forgettery, they will always be fools and clowns and chumps. Because as long as they depend on their own Big Conservative Lie to tuck them in at night and tell them that they're good little Reaganites, they cede any pretense of occupying any moral high ground from which to render judgment on the Palinites and the Beckians.

The homunculi who are left inside the Big Tent Batshit Thunderdome are either stupid, evil or nuts...or some cocktail of all three. And if the trend lines of the last 30 years have proven anything, it's that Conservatives are such willing collaborators in their own brainwashing that neither the Expats or the Palnites and their Elite Enablers are capable of retaining any political inconvenient fact longer than 13 seconds (or, in the case of the Palinites, reacting to anything other than what Rupert and Rush tell them to be angry about this time.)

There is absolutely nothing left sifting around inside their mushy, angry skulls except that sparkly aluminum sand that good people at Ohio Arts use to make the Etch-a-Sketch.

Shake-shake-shake...and Ronald Reagan never sold weapons to terrorists, funded an illegal war, raised taxes four times, or left behind the largest deficit in American history up until that time.

Shake-shake-shake...and Bush the Elder never hired Lee Atwater.

Shake-shake-shake...and what Southern Strategy?

Shake-shake-shake...and George W. Bush is the Greatest President Ever, you filthy, Liberal traitors!

Shake-shake-shake...and where did you ever get the idea that anyone in the Conservative Movement supported that "Progressive" George W. Bush?

Shake-shake-shake...George Bush who?

Shake-shake-shake...Sarah Palin never supported the bailout!

Shake-shake-shake...Deficits don't matter.

Shake-shake-shake...Deficits are worse than six Hitlers!

Shake-shake-shake...the Kenyan Usurper's deficits are destroying America.

Shake-shake-shake...why do you keep calling me a "Republican"? I'm a Conservative!

Shake-shake-shake...why do you keep calling me a "Conservative"? I'm an Independent!

Shake-shake-shake...why do you keep calling me a "Independent"? I'm a Independent/Conservo/Libertarian!
...

...on a cultural/industrial scale -- you begin to see that (to quote the Joker) someone like Newt "Anyone who quotes me verbatim is lying" Gingrich

is not crazy, but merely ahead of a clearly definable curve. Sullivan's Conservative depends completely on everyone agreeing to forget everything that happened before, say, 2006; Palinites and Teabaggers depends on blotting out everything before January 20, 2009; and Gingrich's lies depend on a sliding, three-day window.

Gingrich will probably fail, but he will not fail due to a lack of understanding of the Real Conservative Movement as it really exists. The beating heart of the Modern Right has always been a vicious, xenophobic one – often racist, often fascist and always giddy-drunk on rage and ignorance and fear, and bearing no relationship whatsoever to Mr. Sullivan’s Fantasy Conservative Movement that never was.

So at exactly the same time Mr. Sullivan was busy making a career for himself as the Useful Gay Idiot for a Movement that hated everything he stood for, the Movement’s real leaders – freaks like Falwell and Limbaugh and Ailes and Gingrich -- were busy, busy, busy in the lab, refining and growing the Party’s happily-brainwashed Orwellian Base and building the electoral and cultural monster that now controls the Movement entirely.

No one who saw where the Right was headed a generation ago could possibly be surprised that, after 40 years and hundreds billions of dollars of effort, the Right now exists in a parallel, Orwellian universe, complete with its own newspapers, magazines, teevee networks, book publishers, think tanks and Jebus.

All built on Doublethink.

Or, if you prefer Strategic Forgettery --

...the training of an entire generation of Conservatives to mindlessly attack!attack!attack! the "Left" while holding themselves willfully and belligerently ignorant of what their Movement is really doing and who is really running it -- is, in the end, Ronald Reagan's most potent and vile political legacy: Strategic Forgettery.

One of the most successful practitioners of which is Mr. Andrew Sullivan.