Still Waiting

7-Year Blogiversary Fundraiser: Day Two

Me, during my early, Nation of Islam phase.



For the convenience of you the customer, here is main reason that political discourse in America is completely fucked up

condensed into one, helpful graph.

The Centrism of "Both Sides Do It!" is the spider hole into which the Pig People scuttle every time another tenet of their loathsome ideology blows up in their face.

Of course, if you are still a Conservative in the Year of Our Lord 2012, I expect nothing better.  Your are a cultural dead-loss and beyond redemption and while the rest of us may be required to share a country with you, we are under no obligation to treat you with anything other than contempt.

But the Pig People would be nothing but a minor nuisance -- a boil on the ass of democracy -- without their  Centrists who keep the "Both Sides Do It" spider hole well-furnished and open for business.  Pound for pound, Centrism is the biggest and most debilitating lie in American politics bar none.  It is the Big Lie that makes all the little lies possible, which is why I focus so hard on those who traffic in it.  They are the ones most vulnerable to and terrified of being called out in public.  They are the ones we must run out of the media on a rail.

More on why I picked 1972 next time.

For now -- now that the errands are run, the cat has been to the vet (busted molar, minor surgery Monday), the lad has gotten his hair cut, the laundry is done (OK, it's never done-done, but the mountain has been molehilled), bills (mostly) paid, necessity-shopping completed, and everyone is fed -- I'm off to spend the remains of the day splashing around in a pool with the family.

Unemployed or not, the fact that I am one lucky SOB does manage to penetrate my thick Irish skull every now and then :-)

Thanks.


Here is the PayPal button should you wish to make a fundraiser contribution.

Or, if you prefer using the U.S mail, you can send a check made payable to and care of

The Professional Left Podcast 

P.O. Box 9133

Springfield, IL 62704

And whether or not you choose to send a dime, thank you, thank you, thank you for your readership, comments, emails, companionship and support these last seven years.

Professional Left Podcast #121

Look at our Lords disciples. One denied Him; one doubted Him; one betrayed Him. If our Lord couldn't have perfection, how are you going to have it in city government?

-- Hizzoner Richard J. Daley,

Links:

• How Lockheed/Martin bosses the State Department around
• Amanda Chatel writes about her abortion
• The National Organization for Marriage are awful, awful people
• Driftglass Seven Year Blogiversary Orgy and Fundraiser 
• On the Media and Pundit Tracker
• American Spectator - “Republicans have no reason to interfere in this fight.”
• Driftglass on Chicago City politics here and here.

Da' money goes here:

7-Year Blogiversary Fundraiser: Day One

Don't laugh: back in the day I flipped a lot of real estate in this jacket.

Yes, tomorrow is my 7-year blogiversary.

As a special gift, the good people at NBC have put together what may be the single greatest April Fool's Day "Meet the Press" panel in history:

JOE SCARBOROUGH and MIKA BRZEZINSKI will host the roundtable on Sunday’s “Meet the Press.” The cast: Jon Meacham, David Brooks, Harold Ford Jr. and Tom Friedman. SAVANNAH GUTHRIE will conduct the newsmaker interviews: Rick Santorum and Sen. Chuck Schumer.

Frankly, I would have preferred cash.

Also, yes, that is me in the snappy red jacket, handmade by mom (as a lot of my clothes were) for a boy who was growing at near-Glenn Manning speed in a single-parent household where money was incredibly tight. I am standing in front of the car she, my brother, myself and our dog would fold ourselves into with naught but tent, sleeping bags, camp stove, a Thermos of coffee and a few 8-tracks for our annual, cross-continental sojourn to Iowa, Nebraska, Colorado and points west.

The photo was taken, as I recall, in the middle of the Watergate summer of 1974.

Several weeks my family was gathered around the beat-up, black-and-white teevee in my sister's Phoenix  apartment to watched the President of the United States resign in disgrace.

Some time after that, the new President -- Gerald R. Ford -- announced that "our long national nightmare was over."

Boy, did he get that wrong.

Here is the PayPal button should you wish to make a fundraiser contribution.

Or, if you prefer using the U.S mail, you can send a check made payable to and care of

The Professional Left Podcast 

P.O. Box 9133

Springfield, IL 62704

And whether or not you choose to send a dime, thank you, thank you, thank you for your readership, comments, emails, companionship and support these last seven years.

Stupid Shit Andrew Sullivan Says

"Why on earth should [the 9mm lynching of Trayvon Martin and the subsequent police cover-up] be a partisan issue, one wonders?"

-- Andrew Sullivan.

Grow the fuck up, Andrew.

And while you're growing up, grow up in this country.  In America.  In the real America, not the Disneyfied Reaganeque fantasyland that you and just about every other dorm-room Conservative in the world has spent the last 30 years pretending we are.

Grow up in America, Andrew, steeping in our bloody, jeering, racist past from the day you are born and you will learn very quickly that, depending on where you live and who your parents are, you will either soak the racial history of America in as something shameful to be atoned for and transcended,  or something patriotic and pure; the noble struggle of great men living in a better America whose godly ideals need to be "conserved" and resurrected.

And if you can't grow up in America, Andrew, then shut the fuck up and listen to your Liberal betters, because only a fop living in an Adamantine bubble of near-psychotic denial about the true nature of the America Conservative movement could possibly wonder why this this has become a "partisan" issue.

Empty Suit, Stuffed With Money

I did not mean today to become a book report on the state of the Chicago Political Insider's Club, but this story was too tasty to pass up.


From the invaluable Better Government Association:

Ex-City Colleges Chief Gets “A+” in Personal Finance
By Patrick Rehkamp/BGA

As graduation rates were bottoming out at the City Colleges of Chicago in 2009, then-Chancellor Wayne Watson was cashing out. Big time.

The Better Government Association previously reported Watson was paid more than $500,000 in unused sick and vacation time when he retired from the taxpayer-funded community-college system three years ago.

The BGA recently learned that Watson’s out-the-door compensation was richer than previously known, totaling as much as $800,000, according to public records and interviews.

On top of roughly $537,000 in sick- and vacation-day payouts, Watson also was given an exit bonus of $124,615, according to City Colleges records recently obtained under the Illinois Freedom of Information Act.

What’s more, City Colleges is providing him with free health care coverage for life – costing the system more than $22,000 to date in premiums and reimbursements – and a life insurance policy that he was allowed to cash out for $112,602, records show.

Watson, now president of Chicago State University, wouldn’t say whether he exercised the right to convert the policy to cash. ...

But this much is known: the exit bonus was signed by the City Colleges’ then-board chairman, Jim Tyree, in July 2009, the month before Watson retired, records show.

Tyree died in March 2011. (At the time, he was a co-owner of the Chicago Sun-Times, and chairman and CEO of Mesirow Financial.)

None of the current City Colleges board members were with City Colleges at the time the bonus was agreed upon.

Terry Newman, a close friend of former Mayor Richard M. Daley, was the City Colleges’ board secretary at the time. Through a spokeswoman, Newman said "as he recalls there was no discussion about this or any negotiation about his payout . . . that would have been a discussion and negotiation between the chairman and chancellor."*

Regardless, compensation experts consulted by the BGA said such perks – an exit bonus and a life insurance payout – are relatively rare in the private sector, and are rarer still in the public realm.

"Normally it doesn’t happen that way," said Paul Dorf, managing director of Compensation Resources, Inc., a New Jersey-based consulting firm.

Meanwhile, after the BGA inquired earlier this year about Watson’s sick- and vacation-time payday, Mayor Rahm Emanuel ordered a crackdown on the perk for non-union employees at city-related agencies.

Annual sick-day payouts at CSU were curtailed even earlier – but not before Watson took advantage of the allowance and cashed out $13,000 in unused sick time in 2011, school officials indicated. ...

*(The alert reader will note the name "Terry Newman" and note that it shows up later in this post.  Drawing a line between these two points will count for 1/3 of your final grade)

Understand, this is not happening during budget surplus, high-cotton times at the City of Chicago, when virtually no one would notice or care.  Ever since Chicago gummint revenues took a nosedive in 2007/2008, the city has been frantically cutting, consolidating, early retiring, selling off, selling out, privatizing, re-organizing, re-re-organizing and re-re-re-organizing itself to safe money.


Well...cutting, consolidating and so forth all of those parts of city gummint that are not safe and snugly behind the clout-shield.  Because in Chicago, clout rules all things, 



which is why even as Da Mare mourned publicly about how sad-sad-sad it was that he had to slash the guts out of anything that was not clout-protected, behind closed doors he was cooking up one last scheme to sell off taxpayer assets for enough dough to prop up his bloated administration just long enough to take a victory lap, pass Go, cash in some of his political chips and dance away into legend.


It was not a pretty sight, with stories like (from the Chicago Reader)...

As Mayor Daley cashes in, ousted teacher gets cut off


By Ben Joravsky @joravben


Mayor Daley's had a great run over the last few weeks.


Since leaving office May 16, he has, let's see, landed a gig at the University of Chicago, where he'll have to "coordinate" a handful of lectures in exchange for a reported $100,000 a year.


That would be the same University of Chicago that last year was part of a development team receiving the OK for a $20 million handout from the mayor's good old tax increment financing honeypot to help build a hotel, retail, and office complex in blighted (ha, ha, ha) Hyde Park.


Daley also got a gig as a lawyer for Katten Muchin Rosenman, the firm that employs his best friend, Terry Newman, and racked up more than a million bucks in legal fees from advising the city on such privatization schemes as the parking meter lease deal.


Thanks a lot for that one, fellows.


Then there's the company the ex-mayor's reportedly launching with his son, Patrick, which will be seeking overseas investors for deals in Chicago. Not to mention his speaking engagements and prospective book deals.


As my colleague Mick Dumke put it, they're all steps in Daley's "ongoing privatization of himself."


Oh, wait, can't forget his pension—about $184,000 a year.


To paraphrase the great Johnnie Taylor, it might have been cheaper to keep him around.


In contrast, consider the case of Anthony Skokna, 56, who was unceremoniously dumped from his job as a history teacher at Marshall High School, just about two years shy of claiming any of his pension. He's been applying for jobs all over town, but no one will hire him, most likely because he's too old.


Before he went to Marshall, Skokna taught for eight years at a couple of Catholic high schools in Chicago. He says he might have closed out his career in the Catholic schools but he had a growing family (eight kids) and needed a higher-paying job. In the fall of 1992, he started at Marshall. "The city was so short of teachers, they hired a bunch of us," he says. "Different than today."


Actually, not so different. That teacher shortage was in part induced by a pension buyout plan the central office cooked up to induce hundreds of older teachers into retiring so they could be could be replaced with younger ones (like Skokna) who made less money.


If this were a novel, it would be called ironic.
...

...and this...

Arbitrator OKs CTA layoffs starting Sunday
February 3, 2010 6:09 PM

Labor unions at the CTA lost a challenge to the transit agency's plans to lay off more than 1,100 employees starting Sunday as part of major service cuts to reduce a budget deficit.

An arbitrator's ruling today against the unions means that the cuts -- an 18 percent reduction in bus service and 9 percent for trains -- will be implemented, barring any developments to erase a $95.6 million deficit that remains for 2010, transit officials said.

CTA management has introduced more than $200 million in internal cuts and other cost savings, and it said the unions must agree to salary and other concessions to help erase the rest of the deficit and stave off the service cuts. The unions representing CTA bus and rail workers have so far refused, saying they made concessions in the past.

...and this.

Fitch downgrades Chicago bonds

Posted by Greg H. at 10/28/2010 3:48 PM CDT on Chicago Business
Chicago's bond rating has suffered another hit, this one from Fitch Ratings.

The New York-based firm on Thursday lowered its rating on $7 billion in outstanding general-obligation city debt to AA- from AA, particularly citing the city's increasing reliance on one-time revenues to fix its budget.

"While the economy remains broad and diverse, the city's financial position has weakened," Fitch wrote. Revenues have been hurt by high unemployment and above-average home foreclosures, while the city has reduced reserves from around $2 billion a couple of years ago to a projected $790 million by December.

Fitch applauded layoffs and other payroll trims implemented by outgoing Mayor Richard M. Daley, but added, "The ability to make further expenditure cuts to personnel is extremely limited" due to union contracts.

"Rising costs for public safety and the continued slow economic recovery will severely limit the city's ability to achieve structural balance without working (politically difficult) structural solutions," it said 

...and this...

Chicago Community College Budget Calls for Hundreds of Layoffs
Alex Keefe Jul. 29, 2010

Hundreds of non-teaching staff members could be laid off under the new budget proposal for Chicago's community college system.

Next year's budget for City Colleges of Chicago could fund 311 fewer positions, some through attrition.

But that could include 225 non-teacher layoffs.

Chancellor Cheryl Hyman they would affect administrators, as the district tries to consolidate some workers from its seven colleges.

...and this...

New Chicago Public Schools Budget: Layoffs, Furlough Days, And Larger Class Sizes To Make Ends Meet 

Chicago Sun-Times | Fran Spielman | 04/16/09

About 1,200 city school workers will receive layoff notices this week, and principals will begin sharing the budget pain via pay freezes and six furlough days, as Chicago Public Schools officials move today to plug their remaining $370 million deficit.

...and this....

Standard & Poor's lowers Chicago bonds

(Crain's) — The city of Chicago's general obligation bonds took a hit by Standard & Poor's, which lowered its long-term debt rating, citing ongoing budget strife.

The ratings agency assigned Chicago's general obligation debt an A+ rating, down one notch from AA-. It gave the same A+ rating — also lowered from AA- — to nearly $804 million in general obligation refunding and taxable project bonds.

S&P said in its report that the new rating "reflects our view of the city's ongoing structural imbalance and heavy reliance on non-recurring revenues to bridge its 2011 budget gap, including the use of most of its remaining reserves from the sale of its parking meters."

...and this...

Daley To Union: 1,600 City Lay Offs Unless Concessions Made

Chicago Sun-Times:

Mayor Daley will be forced to lay off up to 1,600 city employees -- none sworn police officers or firefighters -- unless organized labor agrees to another round of givebacks to wipe out a potential $300 million shortfall, union leaders were told this week.

...showing up with depressing regularity.


And just in case you thought the Machine stopped rolling just because it changed drivers, this is how Mare Rahm handles things (from yours truly, a year ago):

... 

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.

Of course, in a city starved down to its last nickles, a story about throwing absurd, private sector, boom-era pay and perks at the outgoing chancellor of a deeply flawed and failing public institution doesn't make a damn bit of sense until you understand two things.


First, the city's clout system sometimes gets bottlenecked with hungry, hungry hippos: what Abraham Lincoln once refereed to as "too many pigs for the teats."  When this happens, the city college system provides a safe place away from prying eyes where the Machine can quietly dump its loyal, overpaid, surplus lieutenants (or, as one wag once put it, "for decades the ossified city college system has been used as the pasture out to which politically-connected friends have been put".)


And second, while Mr. Watson may have been a glad-handing empty suit, he was Mare Daley's glad-handing empty suit.  He presided discretely and faithfully over Hizzoner's unsanctified resting place for the politically undead and was compensated commensurate with his years of loyalty and discretion.

In other words, there is a Club.

And you are not in it.

Corrupt Ex-Governor Postscript

But first, a joke:

A mayor and a city budget director walk into a bar.

The mayor says, "Buy me a drink."

The budget  director shows the mayor a spreadsheet and says, "But the city is broke."

The mayor says, "Buy me a drink or you're fired."

The budget director disappears into the bathroom for a few seconds and returns with a new spreadsheet. 

The budget director says, "I was mistaken. We have three million dollars!"

The mayor says, "Hear that everybody! The drinks are on me!"

You know, I thought this post from last year about the sentencing of Milorad "Rod" R. Blagojevich would probably be my last:

Corrupt Ex-Governor Update: Final Edition

He once thought God made him a Rod to rule over Kings.

Today, not so much.

Today, little Roddy

completes his long, strange journey to the Illinois Governors' Maximum Security Retirement FacilityHouse of Many Doors.

...

But of course I was wrong, because today the judge passed sentence on Blago's Chief-of-Staff-turned-informant, John Harris, and in the arc of Mr. Harris' career there is still some tale to tell.

First, the facts.  From the Chicago Tribune:

Blagojevich's chief of staff gets 10 days in prison 

Defendant gets sympathy from judge, who sentenced ex-governor to 14 years

March 29, 2012|By Annie Sweeney, Chicago Tribune reporter

A former chief of staff for Rod Blagojevich who provided crucial assistance to investigators was sentenced Wednesday to a mere 10 days in prison by a federal judge who reserved his harshest comments instead for the former governor, suggesting he was an impossible boss and pointing out some had even questioned his mental stability.

The sentence for John Harris was in stunning contrast to the crushing 14-year term Blagojevich began serving earlier this month in a federal prison in Colorado. In fact, Blagojevich has already spent more time in prison than Harris will.

During the sentencing hearing, U.S. District Judge James Zagel took the unusual step of querying Harris about what it was like to work for Blagojevich, quoting from letters sent to the court about how unreasonable Blagojevich could be. The judge also made a reference to suggestions at trial of "some level of mental instability" on Blagojevich's part.

Zagel, who also sentenced Blagojevich, went on to express sympathy for Harris and the "dilemma" he faced with a boss who wouldn't be dissuaded from the plots and schemes to corruptly trade on his office and influence for his own financial benefit.

But in the end, Zagel concluded that Harris shouldn't avoid prison time entirely.

"You were much too close to power, and you had an ability either to stop some of the things (or) report what was going on," the judge said.

After a dramatic pause, Zagel then announced his decision — 10 days in prison, perhaps the shortest prison term ever imposed in a public corruption case in Chicago.
...

Ten days?

There are people doing longer, harder time for smoking a joint.  For holding a joint.  There are people doing longer, harder time for speeding tickets.  Ten days is one third of the time judges here hand out for misdemeanor prostitution which, when you think of it, was basically what John Harris did for Blago:

Woman Jailed In Prostitution Case 

June 4, 2011 1:08 PM

WHEATON, Ill. (STMW) - A Chicago woman has been sentenced to 30 days in DuPage County Jail following her arrest late last year by Naperville police for prostitution.

Christina E. Trotter, 20, remained Friday night in the jail, after having been found guilty of misdemeanor charges of prostitution and driving with a suspended license.

Records on file in DuPage County Circuit Court indicated Trotter was convicted Thursday by Judge Ronald D. Sutter. He sentenced her to jail on the suspended license charge, entered an “unsatisfied judgment” finding on the prostitution count and assessed a total of $500 in court costs, records showed.
...

Ten days?

Hell, has anyone even bothered to cook up prison slang for doing ten days? "Dine and dash"? "Overnight sensation"? "Honeymooner"? "Balloon boy?" "Salahi"?  Shit, by the time your body cavity search is finished there's already a car waiting to whisk you back to hearth and home and (after a little time out of the public eye on some upscale version of the Mel Reynolds Rehab Express) back into the world of clout and cleverness.  And who knows? Maybe with good behavior he can even get that ten shaved down to four.

So why start out a post about the wrist-slapping of Blago's Chief-of-Staff with a joke about city budget gnomes?

Because since the days of Old Man Daley, at City Hall, no skill has been more greatly prized and feared
than mastery of the dark art of municipal budgeting.  Because, to misquote Roy Batty, "I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched budget wizards and contract mages pull impossibly large wads of dough out of thin air using Microsoft Excel, quantum singularities and accounting arcanum they don't teach anywhere this side of Hogwarts."

Because you do not rise to the level of City Budget Director and then successfully keep that job in all kinds of weather without knowing exactly how sketchy and corrupt the system is to five significant digits.

Because unless you are a regular reader of this blog, you'll probably never guess what John Harris did before he signed up to be Governor Fucking Golden's enforcer?

From me, in 2008:

Corrupt Governor Update, VI

...
So who is John Harris?

Well, once upon a time in a city far, far away...

Daley names O'Hare man as budget director 

It wasn't long ago that John Harris was in Mayor Daley's doghouse. But a major scandal and the power vacuum created by a wave of early retirements have a way of wiping the slate clean.

Harris, the brains and voice behind Daley's plan for new runways at O'Hare Airport, was chosen Monday to be Chicago's new $135,516-a-year director of budget and management. He succeeds Bill Abolt, who walked the plank for failing to clean up the hired truck mess.

A former intelligence officer and prosecutor who spent eight years in the Judge Advocate General's Corps of the U.S. Army, Harris can match Abolt's intellect. But he also has the toughness and political savvy that Abolt may have lacked.

"He don't take no mess. He's a no-nonsense person who will demand that things be done and they will be done," said Ald. William Beavers (7th), chairman of the City Council's Budget Committee.

Harris is a "better candidate for budget director than Bill Abolt was" because he's served time in two of the biggest-spending departments, said a longtime City Hall observer.

"He knows where all the bodies are buried and where the gun is hidden," the source said.
...

Can't really say if he did a good job or a bad job.

Can say, in Illinois politics, there's a club.

And you ain't in it.

Because the judge's entire, deeply-sympathetic rationale for cutting Mr. Harris the lightest sentence in Illinois political corruption history was that Mr. Harris was some sort of babe-in-the-woods, browbeaten by a Meany McMeanington boss into doing naughty things, for which Mr. Harris is very, very sorry (from the Tribune again) --

...
Zagel, who also sentenced Blagojevich, went on to express sympathy for Harris and the "dilemma" he faced with a boss who wouldn't be dissuaded from the plots and schemes to corruptly trade on his office and influence for his own financial benefit.

But in the end, Zagel concluded that Harris shouldn't avoid prison time entirely.

"You were much too close to power, and you had an ability either to stop some of the things (or) report what was going on," the judge said.

After a dramatic pause, Zagel then announced his decision — 10 days in prison, perhaps the shortest prison term ever imposed in a public corruption case in Chicago.
...
Harris, who was Blagojevich's chief of staff for three years, testified that at first he objected to some of Blagojevich's crazier ideas, earning him a reputation in the governor's inner circle as a naysayer and acquiring a nickname from Blagojevich — the "Prince of Darkness."

As time went on, Harris testified, he decided to become Blagojevich's sounding board because the governor was increasingly isolated. "There were only so many arrows I could absorb," he told the first jury.
...

-- which is obviously ridiculous.

And finally (and most importantly) because my friends, just in case you need reminding...

There is still a Club (from the Sun-Times)

... The judge also cited what he described as an “unusual set of character reference letters” for Harris, many from prominent figures in city and state political circles. Zagel said he knew at least 10 of the letter writers personally.

And federal prosecutors only had words of praise for Harris. “He was clearly doing everything he could from Day 1” to help authorities build their case, Assistant U.S. Atty. Carrie Hamilton told Zagel.

Still, Harris admitted that he broke the law in a scheme to help Blagojevich try to parlay his power over the Senate appointment into a lucrative private-sector job.

Although he will forever be associated with Blagojevich, whose administration he joined in 2005, Harris had far deeper roots with former Mayor Richard M. Daley. He was a campaign coordinator in a North Side ward for Daley’s 1995 re-election bid and was city budget director and a high-ranking Aviation and Police Department official. He was best known at City Hall for supervising the dead-of-night dismantling of Meigs Field in 2003.

At least two former Daley administration officials — longtime mayoral aide Patrick Harney and chief financial officer Dana Levenson — attended Wednesday’s sentencing to show support for Harris.
...

And you still ain't in it.

The Goldberg Variations

While going back and forth with Jeffrey Goldberg, Mr, Sullivan said the unintentionally funniest damn thing I have heard in weeks:

And what he means, by the way, by "will not be argued with" is, from my perspective, that I will not be bullied by a single colleague into not writing things I believe are true. And he is right about that. But argue? I argue till the cows come home. I live for it. With anyone on most anything.

C'mon, Andrew.  This is bullshit and you know it.

There is one Very Large Subject you "...will not touch. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not wearing a HazMat suit. Not with a 20 foot barge pole."

You will not, will not, will not step into the arena over the simple, factual history of the American Conservative Movement -- a cause to which you have devoted so much of your adult life -- because you simply do not have the guts.  Because -- like so many Conservatives -- the simple truth terrifies you.

 A year ago I wrote --

...

Sullivan-style Conservatism rests on a foundation of overt dishonesty and a highly mythologized past, which is constantly refreshed and extended by the hilariously dodgy assertions being made by people like Mr. Sullivan.

This scam is abetted by a compliant press which is simply too cowardly to turn an honest and critical eye to the real record of Conservatism for the last 30 years, and its spokesmodels -- people like Mr. Sullivan and Davis Brooks -- who make absolutely sure they never get cornered in a venue where there is the slightest chance some goof will stand up and confront them over the many, many inconvenient truths that are always threatening to blow their own Conservative consensual hallucination apart.

Both [Sarah] Palin and Sullivan (and Brooks, and all the rest) rode to financial success and cultural prominence on the back of Fake Reagan and Fantasy Conservatism doing battle with Imaginary Liberals, and now neither Palin nor Sullivan (nor Brooks, nor all the rest) can afford to have people tugging at the bright, clear, awkward loose ends of the fictions on which they have built a living. 

...

-- which, as regular readers of this blog know, is one of literally hundreds of essays I and others have written about the Long Con being run by apostate Conservatives like Mr. Sullivan and Mr. Brooks.  I have written about how instantly they revert to lying or evasion and/or snotty condescension (or hilariously terse, hair-splitting emails to third-parties instead of directly to me) on those exceedingly rare occasions when someone catches them out in the open like hermit crabs scrambling between shells with a question about one of those "inconvenient truths that are always threatening to blow their own Conservative consensual hallucination apart."

So why bring this up now?

First consider this short, ugly recap of the history of Jeffrey Goldberg (from Glenn Greenwald/Salon in 2010):

The Jeffrey Goldberg Media

BY GLENN GREENWALD

...

Numerous commentators immediately noted the supreme and obvious irony that Goldberg, of all people, would anoint himself condescending arbiter of journalistic standards, given that, as one of the leading media cheerleaders for the attack on Iraq, he compiled a record of humiliating falsehood-dissemination in the run-up to the war that rivaled Judy Miller’s both in terms of recklessness and destructive impact.

Except unlike Miller, who was forced to leave the New York Times over what she did, and the NYT itself, which at least acknowledged some of the shoddy pro-war propaganda it churned out, Goldberg has never acknowledged his journalistic errors, expressed remorse for them, or paid any price at all.  To the contrary, as is true for most Iraq war propagandists, he thrived despite as a result of his sorry record in service of the war.  In 2007, David Bradley — the owner of The Atlantic and (in his own words) formerly “a neocon guy” who was “dead certain about the rightness” of invading Iraq  — lavished Goldberg with money and gifts, including ponies for Goldberg’s children, in order to lure him away fromThe New Yorker, where he had churned out most of his pre-war trash.  

One of his most obscenely false and damaging articles — this 2002 museum of deceitful, hideous journalism, “reporting” on Saddam’s “possible ties to Al Qaeda” — actually won an Oversea’s Press Award for — get this — “best international reporting in a print medium dealing with human rights.”  Goldberg, whose devotion to Israel is so extreme that he served in the IDF as a prison guard over Palestinians and was described last year as “Netanyahu’s faithful stenographer” by The New York Times’ Roger Cohen, wrote an even more falsehood-filled 2002 New Yorker article, warning that Hezbollah was planning a master, Legion-of-Doom alliance with Saddam Hussein for a “larger war,” and that “[b]oth Israel and the United States believe that, at the outset of an American campaign against Saddam, Iraq will fire missiles at Israel — perhaps with chemical or biological payloads — in order to provoke an Israeli conventional, or even nuclear, response,” though — Goldberg sternly warned — “Hezbollah, which is better situated than Iraq to do damage to Israel, might do Saddam’s work itself” and “its state sponsors, Iran and Syria, maintain extensive biological- and chemical-weapons programs.”  That fantastical, war-fueling screed — aimed at scaring Americans into targeting the full panoply of Israel’s enemies — actually won a National Magazine Award in 2003.  Given how completely discredited those articles are, those are awards which any person with an iota of shame would renounce and apologize for, but Goldberg continues to proudly tout them on his bio page at The Atlantic.

Despite all of those war-cheerleading deceits — or, again, because of them — Goldberg continues to be held out by America’s most establishment outlets as a preeminent expert in the region.  As Jonathan Schwarz documents, Goldberg is indeed very well-”trained” in the sense that establishment journalists mean that term:  i.e., as an obedient dog who spouts establishment-serving falsehoods.  That’s why Goldberg is worth examining:  he’s so representative of the American media because the more discredited his journalism becomes, the more blatant propaganda he spews, the more he thrives in our media culture.  That’s why it’s not hyperbole to observe that we are plagued by a Jeffrey Goldberg Media; he’s not an aberration but one of its most typical and illustrative members.

So...whatever else Mr. Goldberg might be, he is also a smearmonger and war pimp.

Got it?

A smearmonger and war pimp with whom Andrew Sullivan has been agreeably consorting for years and years.

A smearmonger and war pimp who Mr. Sullivan is now absolutely Shocked!Shocked! to discover would drop a full payload of lies and slander on Mr. Sullivan's head when it became convenient to do so.

Honestly, if one sentence could sum up Mr. Sullivan's career it might be --  a man who simply could not stop lying down with various right-wing ideological dogs...and who always expressed the same, stunned surprise when, each time, he got up covered with ideological fleas.

Me?

I regularly take Mr. Sullivan to the woodshed with what could fairly be described very blunt and vivid language.  I do not do it gratuitously, or out of pique: instead I genuinely belief that this subject -- vivisecting the cancer of the American Conservative movement, and honestly discussing exactly how the modern Right was created and unleashed --  is vitally important to our future as a democracy.

This is a Movement with which Mr. Sullivan has been deeply involved for decades -- a Movement which he crossed oceans and continents to join -- a Movement to which he completely owes his career -- and a Movement about which he refuses to argue honestly.  And unlike Mr. Goldberg, however sharp my language might be, I do not lie about Mr. Sullivan.  I do not impute to him positions her has never taken or words he has never written.  I simply bring up a subject -- over and over again -- which makes people like Mr. Sullivan very, very uncomfortable.

Which brings us back to the matter at hand:  Mr. Sullivan's assertion that he will gladly "...argue till the cows come home. I live for it. With anyone on most anything."

Really?

Since moving to the "Daily Beast", here is the level of engagement Mr. Sullivan has afforded his longtime Neocon running buddy, Jeffrey Goldberg, even though -- as Mr. Sullivan has apparently failed to notice until just right now -- his buddy is a rather notorious smearmonger and war pimp:

Which is an incredibly high number, even when you factor "Jonah Goldberg" out of the search total.

 ...and factor in the term "Goldblog" (Jeffrey Goldberg's nickname for his site)...





Of course, even this amazingly high level of engagement is dwarfed by the amount of traffic Mr. Sullivan drives into the arms of his good friend David Frum:  the neoconservative and former George W. Bush speechwriter.




which is neither here nor there, except that is underscores the point that Mr. Sullivan clearly has no compunction engaging some sketchy and often dishonest people -- on a large and sustained basis. -- as long as those people shared the same Conservative stinkhole with him back in the Fifth Column glory days.

But those days are over, and those people were wrong.  Brutally, spectacular wrong, for a long time and about a lot of very important things.

So how does Mr. Sullivan deal with those who ask the next, logical questions?  Questions about how these fools ever got to run anything to begin with?   Questions about how  the long, long, bloody, bigoted downward arc of the Modern Conservative movement was ignored by its leading intellectuals decade after decade?   Questions about how those who were so complicit for so long still command the loyalty of their colleagues long after their actual words and deeds should have flunked them out of any decent person's good graces?   Questions about why those who were right all along are still treated as pariahs?  Questions about who runs the American Conservative movement -- about exactly how the modern Right was built and set in motion?

Because there are those who ask those questions, Mr. Sullivan.

Who ask them again and again and again.

For smearmongers and war pimps the door is always open.  The microphone always live.

For us who ask the serious questions that terrify you

only silence.

Electoral Electrolysis

At the national level, in the crucible of the 2012 presidential campaign, the GOP has finally, publicly  decomposed itself into its two, constituent elements: unremitting lying and unfettered crazy.

Usually they work together, the boundless Lie and the imbecile Crazy, like a fascist hand in a bigoted, Christopath glove.  

It is interesting to see them bite each other's throats and punch each other's kidneys.

It is infinitely more interesting to see our Villager media pretending that this is not happening.

Evil Old Monster Gets a New Heart

Professional Left Podcast #120

I never went to a John Wayne movie to find a philosophy to live by or to absorb a profound message. I went for the simple pleasure of spending a couple of hours seeing the bad guys lose.

-- Mike Royko

Links:

• Carol Marin on Toni Preckwinkle and loyalty.
• Driftglass and the Original, 2010 Etch-a-Sketch post
• NASDAQ on the Republican (HAND) JOBS Act.
• Sara Robinson and the 40 hour work week.
• Wonkette on Ron Paul's Libertarian Nepotism.  Nepotarianism?  

Da' money goes here: