Fundraiser Day Six: Some Nights Are Stranger Than Others

Fundraiser Day Five: In Which Andrew Sullivan Insists That You Send Me Money

Well obviously not me specifically because as a Liberal I am merely a fitful figment of the collective Conservative imagination. Probably just an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of underdone potato. In fact I'll bet there's more of pastrami-on-rye than of writer about me, whatever I am!

But Mr. Sullivan does exhort people to shower dollars on hard-working writers such as Mr. Sullivan because it's hard out there for a writer:

It’s Hard Out There For A Writer 

OCT 31 2013 @ 1:40PM

... I’m pinioned between these two conflicting forces. Magazine writers were coddled in luxurious greenhouses for years and in some ways, the new desert we are struggling in is a tonic against some of the mediocre crap that used to be run at endless length in what were effectively gilded guilds. And yet, the new landscape is also more of a desert than a plain. There’s almost nothing to eat unless you do something other than writing as well. Some new media patrons seem to be filling in the gaps – in nonfiction, we have Bezos and Omidyar and Hughes coming to the rescue. Others may follow. But that would be – yes, I will retire this metaphor in this sentence – a bunch of precious, gilded oases, in a still-vast wasteland, rather than a viable, renewable ecology.

What interests me is finding a way to pay writers with money that comes from readers. It’s that simple really. The end of paper and print as the delivery system should make that feasible in principle. After all, what the old media barons used to have on their side was their unique ability to pay for all that industrial-sized printing and mailing. Now, all those costs have disappeared. So where are the new journals and magazines and blogazines, founded by writers and aimed at readers? There are many online, and at the Dish we do all we can to find and promote them. But there is as yet no viable, sustained model for them to stand on their own two feet.

... 

Banner ads can also be useful – but it’s hard (and ethically tenuous) for a lone writer to both do her job and also persuade companies to sponsor her. Remnant advertizing – breakthroughs in testosterone! – can work too. Put some or all of this together and you have a model that might provide more writers with a way to make a living as writers.

In other words, what makes my own job so exhilarating – and nerve-wracking – is the chance not just to create and constantly evolve an online blogazine, but to pioneer a bit of this new writing economy. Dish subscribers already pay six full-time writers and researchers (including interns) and give everyone health insurance; in the future, we’d really like to start using this still-new model to commission and pay good money for long-form journalism. We won’t be able to help book-writers (except for promoting, examining and talking about), but we hope to be able to help nonfiction writers more generally – and not just with eyeballs. That’s why subscribing to the Dish is not just about the Dish. It’s about trying to create a new economy for writing...

Mr. Sullivan sells his pitch with this punch directly to my heart:

Harlan Ellison has a great, if somewhat excessive, rant on this:

So while I obviously agree strongly with "Pay The Effing Writer" I also retain vivid memories of the last couple of "New!Digital!Economy!" schemes which ended with a few people getting very rich and everyone else wondering what the hell had happened to the revolution that was supposed to be just around the corner.

Either way, I strongly endorse Andrew Sullivan's idea that you should send me money, because even if you think after eight years that I am undeserving or talentless or too sweary or just a fragment of underdone potato, remember, you're not sending me money just for my sake.  Oh heavens no!  You are a pioneer, goddamn it!  Pioneering your pioneer heart out to create an even newer, new economy

for the world's oldest profession!

So commence to pioneering!

Fundraiser Day Five: Charles Pierce Wonders What Comes Next

Mr. Pierce pronounced Last Rites over the silly, fleeting notion of "Obamaism" and wonders what will take its place:

The End Of Obamaism

By Charles P. Pierce

...
Then, of course, there was Glitch-ghazi-gate, the troubled rollout of the Affordable Care Act's website that occasioned yet another round of mock concern from the Republicans in Congress -- now desperate to change the subject from how they almost blew up the economy -- and from the courtier press -- now desperate to get away from a story in which there was no spurious "balance" to hide behind. NBC, in particular, seemed positively frantic to prove its non-liberalism to the world.

What this very strange period ultimately proves is that Barack Obama, for all his talk about how "Washington" doesn't work, and all his endless praise for the essential goodness of the American people, has to know by now that we are in fact a very political people, easily manipulated, and carefully divided against each other, over and over again, and by people who know how. I never bought the 2004 speech to the Democratic National Convention ("We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America!"), never bought a word of it. Now we are seeing it in its fundamental eclipse. Whatever Obamaism really is, it has run its course. The fight now is over what comes next.

Well, since Cholly asked, I'd say that as far as our national political dialogue is concerned, "Liberals" will remain in a state of enforced invisibility, existing only as bogeymen who are either entirely (Fox News/Hate Radio) or 50% (MSNBC/NYT/PBS/NPR/Ad Nauseum) to blame for everything. America's Emmanuel Goldstein: the all-purpose scapegoat for all bad things.

The Liberal critique of the Wingnuts, on the other hand, will continue be expropriated, chopped, stripped, repainted and re-marketed by the hydra-headed David Frum/Ramesh Ponnuru/Andrew Sullivan/Rich Lowry/Michael Steele/Joe Scarborough beast as "Real Conservatism".  They will continue to have many amusing, dick-waving arguments among themselves about who was right about the Crazies first.  None of them will ever mention the word "Liberal" except to sneer.  They will all continue to be gainfully employed.

Everyone associated with the "No Labels" scam will continue to get paid.

David Brooks will return from "book leave" tanned and rested with new insights into why Both Sides are to Blame.

The Poors will continue getting poorer.  The rich will continue getting richer and paying premium prices to keep the Poors the hell away from them.  Liberals will continue to yell impotently outside the castle gates.

Eventually enough old, white, Republican bigots will shuffle off to unquiet graves to change the political reward structure just enough so that we might be able to begin to address actual problems, which by that time will have grown so acute that they will be Huge Horrible Megadeath Crises, which the remainder of the Real Conservative Caucus will go right back to telling us can only be fixed by unleashing the power of the Free Market (Translation: even less regulation, even lower taxes.)

People will wonder Very Loudly what the fuck was wrong with us back at the dawn of the 21st that we refused to rouse ourselves to fix our very real, very immediate, clearly dire problems.

Which is when we will either get genuinely serious about our Huge Horrible Megadeath Crises...or the roundup, deportation and imprisonment of the Liberals (which history as it will be written by David Brooks will prove to have been the sinister force behind every Huge Horrible Megadeath Crises) will begin in earnest. 

Fundraiser Day Five: Your Occasional Jug of Both-Sider Poteen

Careful, this one has a bit of a kick to it. 

Chris Hayes invited Republican Congressman Jeff Denham on to discuss the Congressman's lonely uphill (hell, vertical) struggle to get any kind of decent, humane immigration reform past the solid wall of bigoted Republican stupid that blockades the United State Congress.

However, being a Republican, Congressman Denham is also congenitally unable to admit the simple fact that Congress is currently fucked in the head because it has Republicans in it.  As such he pulled so hard on the Both Sider bottle I feared that he may pass out and aspirate on his own bullshit (emphasis added):

HAYES: Yes. What happens to the Republican Party if the Republican Party is perceived -- and I would say rightly -- as the party that killed this last best chance of reform?

DENHAM: Well, certainly over the last decade or so, you can blame both parties, both parties have made mistakes. The president certainly had control of both houses and the presidency and could have gotten this through.

But right now you know the Senate has pretty much said put up or shut up.  Now it`s the House`s job to act and I`m going to continue to push to get this done. I think what really causes challenges in the election are those extremes that say outrageous things and continue to label the brand of my party or the outrageous things that have been said on the other side of the aisle as well.

HAYES: Congressman Jeff Denham, just for those keeping track at home, that`s 185 Democrats on that bill and two Republicans. Thank you so much for your time.

If Congressman Denham is ever run out of the House of Representatives (Motto: The creepy, angry, meth-slinging younger stepbrother of the World's Greatest Deliberative Body) he has a bright future cadging Green Room snacks on the Sunday talk show circuit, or playing "Marco Rubio" --

...

In case you missed Jon Stewart's award-verging "interview" with Marco Rubio, here is your rush transcript of Senator Rubio's answer to Jon Stewart every single time Mr. Stewart tried very respectfully to point out that Senator Rubio was, um, lying, and that the relentless, pathological obstructiveness of the Republican Party was unmatched by anything Democrats have done in modern history.

"Both sides..."

"Well, you know, both sides..."

"Both Democrats and Republicans..."

"That's just politics..."

"The Democrats left us no choice..."

"Both sides..."

"Democrats and Republicans..."

"Both sides..."

"Both Democrats and Republicans..."

And so forth, to the point of being comical...

-- in the off-Broadway production of "Wicked Thirsty":

Fundraiser Day Four: In Which Senator Rand Paul Disqualifies Himself

From America's Premier Young Adult Atlas Shrugged Essay Contest.

From Crooks and Liars:

Rachel Maddow detailed yet another instance of Rand Paul lifting entire passages from wikipedia pages about movies for his speeches, this time the 1988 film Stand and Deliver, with Edward James Olmos. 

Rand Paul's hometown newspaper the Louisville Courier-Journal is taking notice as well...

From the rules page of the Atlas Shrugged Essay Contest:

Eligibility: 12th Graders, College Undergraduates, and Graduate Students

Entry Deadline: September 17, 2013

FIRST PRIZE: $10,000
3 SECOND PRIZES: $2,000
5 THIRD PRIZES: $1,000
25 FINALISTS: $100
50 SEMIFINALISTS: $50

And here's the important bit (emphasis added):

Essay must be solely the work of the entrant. Plagiarism will result in disqualification. Essays must not infringe on any third party rights or intellectual property of any person, company, or organization. By submitting an essay to this Contest, the entrant agrees to indemnify the Ayn Rand Institute for any claim, demand, judgment, or other allegation arising from possible violation of someone’s trademark, copyright, or other legally protected interest in any way in the entrant’s essay.

If Ayn Rand's entire body of work could be summarized in a single sentence it would be this: One, long, often poorly-written and two-dimensional primal scream against anyone ever expropriating someone else's labor for any reason whatsoever.

If Rand Paul's entire career could be summarized in a single sentence it would be this: One, long, vicious and often hilariously incoherent act of Randite idolatry.

It is, therefor, an absolutely perfect, IOKIYAR moment to discover that:

A) Rand Paul has built some of his hilariously incoherent speeches on work he stole from others, and;

B) Rand Paul clearly does not have the slightest fucking clue as to why it would be wrong of him to do this.

Fundraiser Day Four: Just When Victoria Jackson

Thought she had the title of Dumb-As-Almighty-Fuck Blonde Wingnut all sewn up...

...Ms. Suzanne Somers decided it would be a really excellent idea to take on all those Libruls who pointed out that the only thing her Wall Street Journal op-ed demonstrated conclusively was that any scavenger hunter showing up at her door in search of a clue about history, health care policy or how government actually would leave empty handed:

Suzanne Somers Responds To Critics, Says She Has A Thick Skin

by Brandy Zadrozny Oct 30, 2013 2:05 PM EDT

When Suzanne Somers called Obamacare a socialized ponzi scheme, critics swiftly ripped apart her argument. In an email to The Daily Beast, she defends her assertions.

Suzanne Somers, the loveable darling of TV’s Three’s Company and more recently, a controversial advocate for alternative medicine, got a lot of flack about her Wall Street Journal column published Monday denouncing The Affordable Care Act as “socialized medicine.” The Journal offered a lengthy correction of her most egregious errors, but even that couldn't stop the pile-on from reporters criticizing her numerous, dubious claims about the Canadian health-care system and the effects of Obamacare on seniors.
...

Is there anything else you want to say? I grew up in an America where individual beliefs were respected. Both sides of the aisle worked together because there was a common vision. As Americans you could dream big. I was an abused child with a big dream. As I hid in the closet night after night escaping the violence, I visualized a time where I could be on a big stage. I saw it. I dreamt it. And because I was an American, I worked hard and achieved my goal. I now live a life filled with love and happiness. I hope for all Americans that we can return to a time where we all can dream big and accomplish good together.

Right off the bat, as a freelance editor, I believe it is my responsibility to point out that not only has "The Daily Beast" misspelled the word "lovable", but I think they have confused that word with "pneumatic eye-candy".

Now, having dispensed with my duties as editor-without-portfolio, let me state that I while I find Ms. Somers' kind of invincible conservative stupidity tragic, I also a terrible person who finds it immensely entertaining to watch Famous Conservative Dolts fail over and over and over again to notice when they have dug the hole so deep that even the Balrogs are telling them maybe they should put down the shovel and go take a nap.

Like week-old chili wagon leftovers, Ms. Somers' stupid burns even harder on the second day than it did on the first.

One the other hand, Ms. Somers now has had one more column published in the Daily Beast and in the Wall Street Journal than anyone I know.

Great!

Now I'm all sad.  And on my birthday.

Hey, you know what would make me feel slightly better?

Money.

Fundraiser Day Four: Elegant Dining With Phyllis Schlafly

The Godmother of Wingnuttia tells White America to stop putting out the God damn good china for those drunken Micks and thieving Eye-Ties.

From Wonkette:

PHYLLIS SCHLAFLY HAS HAD IT WITH PEOPLE THINKING STATUE OF LIBERTY WELCOMES IMMIGRANTS

by DOKTOR ZOOM

And take your lousy anchor babies with you!Phyllis Schlafly, the Queen Mum of rightwing hate, is getting pretty tired of the poor and the huddled masses yearning to breathe free. So yesterday, she tossed a tempest; in a radio commentary, she insisted that the Statue of Liberty actually “has nothing whatsoever to do with immigration.” Schlafly also dismissed Emma Lazarus’ poem “The New Colossus” as some disgraceful graffiti that actually ruined the monument. In her version of the statue’s history,people who had nothing to do with this great gift from the French were allowed to paste a plague on the base of the statue with a quotation that has misrepresented the statue as an invitation to open immigration. Remember, it’s the Statue of Liberty, not the Statue of Immigration.”

We’re not sure whether Schlafly will now call for the banning of Neil Diamond’s “Coming to America” and sentimental movies depicting hopeful immigrants cheering as their ship enters New York harbor, or if she’ll settle for the inclusion of a disclaimer on all copies of these popular lies.

As if Schlafly’s general horribleness weren’t bad enough, she also tries to suggest that FDR and Ronald Reagan would agree with her, cribbing phrases from speeches they gave to commemorate the 50th and 100th anniversaries of the monument, but kind of ignoring the decidedly pro-immigration sentiments of both speeches.

...

Imaginary Reagan remains hugely popular with the pig people, as does Fake Roosevelt, Fake Lincoln, bits of the Articles of Confederation, parts of Republican history prior to 1963 (portions redacted) and the 1001 Things Pig People Wish The Founders Had Said But Never Did.

Fundraiser Day Four: Because It's My Birthday Today

Always Be Yourself. 

Unless You Can Be Batman. 

Then Always Be Batman.

Fundraiser Day Three: Hippies Cost Penn State $60M

Or so David Brooks may very well have written this story if he hadn't been on "book leave" from his day job at the New York Times:

Penn State to Pay Nearly $60 Million to 26 Abuse Victims

Penn State has agreed to pay $59.7 million to 26 sexual abuse victims of the former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky in exchange for an end to their claims against the university, Penn State announced Monday.

Of the 26 settlements, 23 are fully signed and three are agreed to in principle, with final documentation expected in the next few weeks.

Rodney A. Erickson, the president of the university, called the settlement “another step forward in the healing process for those hurt by Mr. Sandusky, and another step forward for Penn State.”

He added, “We cannot undo what has been done, but we can and must do everything possible to learn from this and ensure it never happens again at Penn State.”

...

Think I'm kidding?

Because blaming the 60s was sure as shit how Mr. Brooks explained away this entire tragedy back in 2011:

...

Of course, as reported, the Penn State Child Rape Cult had little or nothing to do with the so-called "Bystander Effect" -- random strangers reacting with cowardice to a random crime -- and everything to do with Power.

With corrupt, institutional Power.

With powerful people at the top of a corrupt hierarchy lying about matters of life and death...and people further down the food chain who depend on those at the top for their livelihoods and professional identities going along with those lies because that's how corrupt hierarchies work:

But of course, powerful people lying about matters of life and death is not material about which Our Mr. Brooks "reports", but instead is the contaminated water in which he swims.

From his full-throated support of the Operation Iraqi Clusterfuck and contempt for the filthy hippies who opposed it...to his full-throated support of the Scooter Libby and contempt for the filthy Lefties who opposed him...to his full-throated support of the Oligarchs and his contempt for the filthy Occupiers who opposed them..to his full-throated support of Paul Wolfowitz and his contempt for the filthy anti-Semites who questioned him...Mr. Brooks' career has had one, utterly consistent and very profitable theme: Afflicting the afflicted and comforting the comfortable.

And so when any powerful, depraved institution anywhere -- from the Bush Administration to Wall Street to Penn State football -- splits wide open long enough to spill the rot in its belly out into the sunlight...well-fed Kowakian monkey-lizards like David Brooks

are always on hand to scuttle into the breach where they immediately begin to deflect and diffuse away from Power (and towards the imaginary sins of imaginary Liberals) --

...

MR. BROOKS: I don't think it was just a Penn State problem. You know, you spend 30 or 40 years muddying the moral waters here. We have lost our clear sense of what evil is, what sin is; and so, when people see things like that, they don't have categories to put it into. They vaguely know it's wrong, but they've been raised in a morality that says, "If it feels all right for you, it's probably OK." And so that waters everything down. The second thing is a lot of the judgment is based on the supposition that if we were there, we would have intervened.

MR. DIONNE: Right.

MR. BROOKS: And that's just not true.

MR. GREGORY: But I have to challenge you on that point.

MR. DIONNE: Yeah.

MR. GREGORY: Is it really that we don't know right from wrong? Is there anybody who doesn't know that sodomizing a 10-year-old boy in a shower by another man is wrong?

MR. BROOKS: But if you...

MR. DIONNE: Exactly.

MR. BROOKS: If you're alert to the sense of what evil is, what the evil is within yourself and what evil is in society, you have a script to follow. It's not a vague sense. You have a script to follow. And this is necessary because people do not intervene.

...

-- any blame for the deeply-rooted depravity that had clearly been putrefying at the heart of those institutions for years (by Mr. Brooks' logic, the child rape cult at the heart of the Catholic Church could only have been the product of the free-wheeling, godless, anything-goes attitude for which Catholicism has so long been famous.)

On any other day I would have said that Michele Bachmann's complete, on-camera psychotic break from reality was the most astonishing freak-show on display at the Mouse Circus, but not today.

Today the sight of Mr. Brooks -- a man who has grown rich and powerful as the craven "Reasonable Conservative" apologist for the incompetence, corruption and outright malevolence of other rich and powerful men -- staring mildly into the camera and lecturing America on evil and "taking personal responsibility, regardless of what the rules are" left me literally speechless with astonishment.

Today Mr. Brooks walked off with the prize.

And no one intervened.

Update: Mr. Brooks decided to re-plow this ground in the New York Times on Monday.

Fundraiser Day Three: Unfortunately You Plumped For Our 'Never Pay' Policy

A brief reminder that one of the main reasons reason many people have started receiving insurance cancellation letters is that the Affordable Care Act told insurance executives like Mr. Devious that they had to stop ripping people off and sell them real health insurance at reasonable price, and Mr. Devious does not do business like that.

Needless to say, Conservatives view Mr. Devious' plight as worse than several Hitlers.

Fundraiser Day Three: He Can't Say He Wasn't Warned

Longtime readers know that I consider the +5 years POTUS pissed away trying to buy shares in the ludicrous fairy tale that the GOP is not a gang of saboteurs, flim-flam artists, demagogues and lunatics to be one the most maddeningly of all the Obama Administration's unforced errors.

Buried down in the footnotes of future history books, some diligent research assistant will probably note that back in the early 21st century, the notoriously contentious "Liberal blogosphere" was in fact pretty united a few, key issues, one of which was the corrosive toxicity of the Big Lie of Fake Centrism -- that nearly-universal media conspiracy to bury whatever the Conservative atrocity du jour might be under a thick slather of the all-purpose, miracle spray-on topical anesthetic of False Equivalence.

Back in 2007, as the Dubya Administration was preparing to slouch off into legend as the Worst Presidency Ever and before the Party of Personal Responsibility conned the media into helping them hide their racism and failure under a million tricorner hats, the naked reek of bigotry and nihilism coming from the Right was becoming impossible ignore.

That was the year that every major Democratic candidate for president (except Biden) descended on Yearly Kos in Chicago to court the Netroots.

That was the year that some enterprising Yearly Kos attendee videotaped Barack Obama's breakout session, during which the then-Junior Senator from Illinois was explicitly asked what he would do as President to overcome what would surely be an overwhelming Republican effort to obstruct everything he would try to do.

As a minor historical note, if you slow this video down and do a frame-by-frame analysis you may see the back of my head as the camera sweeps past a section of the audience.  I was at this breakout session and remember Senator Obama's remarks very well, which is one reason why President Obama's failure to take the threat of all-out-political jihad from the GOP seriously until it was far too late has been so fucking infuriating.

Barack Obama was warned by the Liberal base of his own party that the Republican opposition who would fall on his neck the day we was elected President he was not-not-not in any way the same chummy Republican opposition he was used to playing poker with in Springfield back when he was a state senator.

But President Obama didn't listen.

He didn't even follow his own 2007 prescription for handling such an eventuality.

And we have all paid a steep price for his willingness to blow off his Liberal base so that he could squire David Brooks off to the Big Beltway Both Sider Hoedown.

Fundraiser Day Three: Little Did He Know...

Little could Charles Pierce have known when he wrote this:

A ratfking political consultant lying in tandem with a career vaginophobe who hasn't won an election in almost a decade, and both of them worthy of airtime that could have been better spent selling blenders or ThighMasters. And the host largely hors de combat because what does he care about anyone he can't see from the veranda on The Vineyard. Well played, NBC.

That the Queen of All ThighMasters


Is now a Very Special Wall Street Journal contributor marching under the same banner as the aforementioned "[lying] ratfking political consultant" and "[lying] career vaginophobe":

Um. This is actual content that the Wall Street Journal ran today. pic.twitter.com/tBGRLEVwny
— Josh Barro (@jbarro) October 28, 2013

Which seems so hilariously like a rejected minor "Stranger Than Fiction" subplot


that I find it hard not to want to buy the Great Trickster Watchmaker a beer.

Fundraiser Day Two: Extremism Decried / Moderation Called For

Thank goodness someone finally has the guts to speak out about The Extremes on Both Sides:

Congress Can Become Civil and Productive if Moderate Voters Demand It

by Joshua DuBois Oct 28, 2013 5:45 AM EDT

The dysfunction and ugly rhetoric typical of this Congress is on us, the voters, but the electorate can force a change, writes Joshua DuBois.

I hate to say it, but this crazy Congress is our fault.

Me and you.

Yep, that Congress. The 9 percent approval rating Congress. The pointless 2-week shutdown Congress. The “You Lie,” impeachment-seeking, “die-quickly,” Congress. It’s tough to hear, but guys, that’s on us.

The reason that this Congress is our fault is that we haven’t given them incentives to get it together and actually solve our nation’s problems. It’s not that Washington isn’t listening; they’re just listening to the wrong voices. The vast majority of members of Congress hear from individuals and groups at the polar ends of our politics: far-right conservative activists and far-left liberal advocates, both of whom have their place and aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. We, the people of the middle, haven’t created a demand for decency, an incentive for compromise.

...

Listen, RedState.com, Heritage Action, Family Research Council, and other voices and groups on the political right have a job to do, and they do it very, very well. The same for Daily Kos, NARAL, and groups on the left. Their focus is trying to keep their elected representatives as ideologically pure as possible, and protect the issues and interests they hold dear. So they’ll send people to town halls, they’ll organize email campaigns, they’ll tweet and blog and raise money and participate fully in the political process. It’s a #tcot and #p2 world out there.

...

No, this is not a bad parody written by me and slipped past the sleepy editors at "The Daily Beast" to raise a few dollars.

This is just one more example of the genuine, cornucopial magic of the Great Mainstream Media Centrist TurDuckEn -- that no matter how packed-in-sideways-with-a-pile-drive full of blindingly obvious false equivalents it may seem to be, there will always be room enough to cram one more fistful of Both Siderism up its ass.

Fundraiser Day Two: Uncritical Veneration and Abject Contempt

This long fencing match between Old Media Defender Bill Keller (New York Times) and Newly Flush New Media Battering Ram Glenn Gleenwald is fascinating.  Keep people talking long enough and their biases will come out.  Keller had the armor and the fortified position.  Greenwald had the longbows and a perfect willingness to put an arrow though anything not marching under his banner.  Both of them drew blood.  Each of them deflected like mad when the other's blade came too close to their vitals.

I agree with this piece of Keller's unsolicited advice:

I’ll offer one unsolicited piece of advice. There’s very little you've said about The Times in this exchange that hasn’t been said before in the pages of The Times, albeit in less loaded language. Self-criticism and correction, and I've had considerable experience of both, are no fun, but they are as healthy for journalism as independence and a reverence for the truth. Humility is as dear as passion. So my advice is: Learn to say, “We were wrong.

Which pairs nicely with Mr. Keller's take on Mr. Greenwald's repeated border crossings between between rigor ("X" is happening and here is my proof) advocacy ("X" is happening and it is wrong) and zealotry ("X" is happening and it is wrong and anyone who disagrees with me to the slightest degree is a drooling stooge of fascism):

You insist that “all journalism has a point of view and a set of interests it advances, even if efforts are made to conceal it.” And therefore there’s no point in attempting to be impartial. (I avoid the word “objective,” which suggests a mythical perfect state of truth.) Moreover, in case after case, where the mainstream media are involved, you are convinced that you, Glenn Greenwald, know what that controlling “set of interests” is. It’s never anything as innocent as a sense of fair play or a determination to let the reader decide; it must be some slavish fealty to powerful political forces.

That said, Mr. Greenwald gives every bit as good as he gets, and since I am a biased judge, I must award him the laurels for this admirably blunt exchange regarding David Brooks:

Greenwald: ...As for whether our new venture will be ideologically homogenized: the answer is “definitely not.” We welcome and want anyone devoted to true adversarial journalism regardless of where they fall on the political spectrum, and have already been speaking with conservatives journalists like that: real conservatives, not the East Coast rendition of “conservatives” such as David Brooks. Our driving ideology is accountability journalism grounded in rigorous factual accuracy.

Keller: ...Your apparent contempt for David Brooks is revealing. Presumably what disqualifies him from your category of “real conservatives” is that he puts reason over passion and sometimes finds a middle ground. As Lenin despised liberals, as the Tea Party loathes moderate Republicans, you seem to reserve your sharpest scorn for moderation, for compromise. Look at today’s Washington and tell me how that’s working out.

Greenwald: ...My “contempt” for David Brooks is grounded in his years of extreme war cheerleading and veneration of an elite political class that has produced little beyond abject failure and corruption. I don’t see anything moderate about him at all.

In that flurry of punches and counterpunches you can glimpse everything that is wrong and corrupt about how the Times -- and the entire Mainstream Media -- cossets clowns David Brooks.

No, Mr. Keller, David Brooks does not sometimes find a "middle ground": in column after column, year after years, when David Brooks wasn't cheerleading some contemptible Conservative scheme for making war or further serving elite interests, he has been hiding from fallout from his own written and spoken opinions by A) denying he ever wrote them, B) radically revising Conservative history so most of the bad stuff simply never happened and, C) constructing wholly fake extreme Liberal positions which he uses to counterbalance the wholly really, monstrous Conservative positions so that he can play the Reasonable Moderate, boldly staking out the completely fictional "middle ground" he invented out of whole cloth.

Mr. Greenwald got close enough to the glass jaw of Mainstream Media Both Siderism to take a shot, and he took it.

Gotta respect that.

Fundraiser Day Two: A Liberalism Without Liberals

From the FaceBook site "Quotable Liberals".

Bwahahahaha!

(h/t Mike K.)

Sunday Morning Comin' Down -- Fundraiser Day One: UPDATE

It was yet another Sunday of discredited war-criminals like Dick Cheney and Bill Kristol and bleating Conservative hacks like Peggy Noonan, Alex Castellanos and S.E. Cupp fished out of the nations's intellectual septic tank and plopped uncritically in front of the nation's teevee cameras.

It was as bad and trifling and utterly predictable as always.  I'm sure others will have something to say about it*, but having temporarily run short of adjectives to write one more review of the same ghastly restaurant slinging the same ptomaine-slick gruel I will instead opt to climb down, down, down into the cool, dark, undisturbed archives of the late Steve Gilliard to retrieve a piece of something he wrote back in March of 2005.

...

I know many of you don't think this is a big deal. The panels suck, TV sucks, who cares who does it.

Well, if they're gonna have a sitdown, we're gonna sit at the table, even if we have to knock the legs off the fucking table first.

Remember when people laughed at the Christian Coalition while they took over state parties? They're cranks, they won't win. Well, while we were laughing, they were winning.

I feel bad that it's been beat up on Wonkette time. I do not have a grudge against her, but it's about effectiveness. If we want to demand the DLC shut up because they lose, how in good conscience can we let her go on these shows and get waxed by the plutocrats at Powerline and Instacracker. She wants a book deal? Cool. Let her have one. It's a lot less glamorous than you would think, believe me. She wants to be on TV, fine. But not as a liberal blogger.

This is the second time in three months this has happened. First Harvard, now this.

When Grant took over the Union Army, he was asked what he would do to stop Lee. He said, simply, "Whereever Lee goes, I shall follow." Well, where ever Instacracker goes, I want someone there to nail his ass. Being on Air America is great, but that's just expanding the choir. We need to have the same respect, be in the same places, pressing them on their bullshit and challenging them. Every time they get to speak freely, we lose. Every time they get the imprimatur of respect, we lose. Unless we are there, side by side, no matter how much work we do, we will be deemed second rate. To defend our ideas, we have to be in a forum to defend them.

How effective can this be?

When Al Franken went after Bill O'Reilly, he made him look like a fool. He stood up to him and O'Reilly never recovered from that. You think that woman would have gotten a judgment if O'Reilly hadn't been softened up by Franken? We need to take these people on, in public, and hammer them with no mercy.

We have the numbers, we have the influence. Name a GOP site which has raised $100K for a candidate? Name one with a thriving, active community, one which actually does things. Kos gets more hits than Instapundit and is the heart of online activism, with a hundred different voices speaking out.

Instacracker doesn't even have comments.

The right blogosphere relies on hype and media support to pretend they're doing more than being Bush's lackies. We have a media which thinks fairness is having a liar on with a historian. We cannot become complacent and wash our hands of the media. We must engage it and use it to our advantage We don't have to like the rules, but we better play the game or they will play it without us.

...

This Sunday we got Alex Castellanos, Dick Cheney, Bill Kristol, David Gregory, Peggy Noonan, S.E. Cupp and, like virtually every Sunday, not a genuine, knives-out Liberal anywhere in sight.

They're playing the game without us.

And they will continue to do so as long as they are permitted to pretend we do not exist.


UPDATE: Other's did indeed have things to say about it.*

From Mr. Charles Pierce:

...

The Clinton Guy should be ashamed. ABC should be ashamed. Hell, the human race should be ashamed. Giving any further airtime to this man that doesn't take place in front of one tribunal or another -- much less, getting him on there and simply letting him spout the way ABC did -- is a crime against humanity. Richard Cheney is the least excusable American human being of the last half-century. That should at least be acknowledged. More to the point, he's mindnumbingly, crashingly stupid, less trustworthy around facts than he is around a shotgun. If ABC wants to do a 15-minute infomercial for war crimes, it needs better production values and a casting director.

On the non-psycho-killer front, a lot of the talk was about the scandalous -- SCANDALOUS!!!!!!!!11111!!!!!! -- developments in Rollout-ghazi-gate. (I'm am starting to hear now from people who enrolled via the 1-800 number and who had no trouble at all. This should give pause to our young techie liberal friends with their cadillac health plans about the "honesty" of their superheated criticism. Yep, Ezra, it's called a telephone. Ask your grandpa.) Over at Disco Dave's Disco Dance Party, the Dancin' Master hosted lying cheese-wheel Alex (Black Hands) Castellanos, who proceeded to lie about the entire social safety net. In this, he was aided, through the curious policies of the NBC News booking staff, by failed politician -- and soon-to-be-failed movie mogul -- Rick Santorum, and have I mentioned recently what a colossal dick Rick Santorum is?

...

Fundraiser Day One

Give it Away Give it Away Give it Away Now

I was on the fence about doing my birthday-week fundraising tin-cupathon this year until the New York Times wryly reminded me that I am an idiot :-)

...

I know I sound like some middle-aged sourpuss who’s forgotten why he ever wanted to do this in the first place. But I’m secretly not as mercenary as I’m trying to pretend. One of the three people who asked me to do something for nothing that dispiriting week was a graduate student in a social work program asking me if I’d speak to her class. I first sent her my boilerplate demurral, but soon found myself mulling over the topic she’d suggested, involuntarily thinking up things to say. I had gotten interested. Oh, dammit, I thought. I knew then I was going to do the talk. And after all, they were student social workers, who were never going to make much money either because they’d chosen to go into the business, which our society also deems worthless, of trying to help people. Also, she was very pretty.

“Let us not kid ourselves,” Professor Vladimir Nabokov reminds us. “Let us remember that literature is of no practical value whatsoever. ... ” But practical value isn’t the only kind of value. Ours is a mixed economy, with the gift economy of the arts existing (if not exactly flourishing) within the inhospitable conditions of a market economy, like the fragile black market in human decency that keeps civilization going despite the pitiless dictates of self-interest.

My field of expertise is complaining, not answers. I know there’s no point in demanding that businesspeople pay artists for their work, any more than there is in politely asking stink bugs or rhinoviruses to quit it already. It’s their job to be rapacious and shameless. But they can get away with paying nothing only for the same reason so many sleazy guys keep trying to pick up women by insulting them: because it keeps working on someone. There is a bottomless supply of ambitious young artists in all media who believe the line about exposure, or who are simply so thrilled at the prospect of publication that they’re happy to do it free of charge.

I STILL remember how this felt: the first piece I ever got nationally published was in a scholarly journal that paid in contributors’ copies, but I’ve never had a happier moment in my career. And it’s not strictly true that you never benefit from exposure — being published in The New York Times helped get me an agent, who got me a book deal, which got me some dates. But let it be noted that The Times also pays in the form of money, albeit in very modest amounts.

So I’m writing this not only in the hope that everyone will cross me off the list of writers to hit up for free content but, more important, to make a plea to my younger colleagues. As an older, more accomplished, equally unsuccessful artist, I beseech you, don’t give it away. As a matter of principle. Do it for your colleagues, your fellow artists, because if we all consistently say no they might, eventually, take the hint. It shouldn’t be professionally or socially acceptable — it isn’t right — for people to tell us, over and over, that our vocation is worthless.

...

It is not quite true that writing pays badly.

Some kinds of writing pays extraordinarily well.

Ending of a Great Adventure

 RIP Lou Reed

White Hunters/Black Hearts

\

Fundraiser Day One

Alt Title: "Beasts of the Southron Wild"

As I Survey the Endless Miles of Burning Wreckage

the modern GOP has left in its wake, it is somehow comforting to remember that David Brooks has been every bit as dazzlingly prophetic in his predictions about the bright future of the GOP (and the young world-beaters who would lead the Party of Personal Responsibility out of its post-Tom DeLay wilderness [yes, even though this was written in June of 2008, Mr. Brooks somehow fails to mention the preceding eight years of unmitigated Bush/Cheney clusterfuck]) as he was about the bright future of various crackpot Conservative economic schemes, John Thune, Iraq, the Administration of George W. Bush, all the Republican Renaissances he predicted before this one and pretty much everything else:

The Sam’s Club Agenda

By DAVID BROOKS

Published: June 27, 2008

...

These writers came of age as official conservatism slipped into decrepitude. Most of them were dismayed by what the Republican Party had become under Tom DeLay and seemed put off by the shock-jock rhetorical style of Ann Coulter. As a result, most have the conviction — which was rare in earlier generations — that something is fundamentally wrong with the right, and it needs to be fixed.

Moreover, most of these writers did not rise through the official channels of the conservative or libertarian establishments. By and large, they didn’t do the internships or take part in the young leader programs that were designed to replenish “the movement.” Instead, they found their voices while blogging. The new technology allowed them to create a new sort of career path and test out opinions without much adult supervision.

...

There are dozens of writers I could put in this group, but I’d certainly mention Yuval Levin, Daniel Larison, Will Wilkinson, Julian Sanchez, James Poulos, Megan McArdle, Matt Continetti and, though he’s a tad older, Ramesh Ponnuru.

Ross Douthat and my former assistant, Reihan Salam, are two of the most promising. This pair has just come out with a book called “Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream.”

There have been other outstanding books on how the G.O.P. can rediscover its soul (like “Comeback” by David Frum), but if I could put one book on the desk of every Republican officeholder, “Grand New Party” would be it. You can discount my praise because of my friendship with the authors, but this is the best single roadmap of where the party should and is likely to head.

...

I’m not sure how quickly the G.O.P. can swing behind this working-class focus and this vision of government-enhanced social mobility. But the McCain campaign really needs to. So far, McCain’s platform is like an omnibus spending bill — lots of decent ideas thrown together with no larger social vision.

It may take a few defeats for the G.O.P. to embrace a Sam’s Club agenda, but sooner or later, it will happen. Trust me.

Never Forget Why They Call It

A "Confidence Game":

It's called a confidence game. Why? Because you give me your confidence? No. Because I give you mine.

The brain-caste of the GOP spent a 40 years and billions of dollars grooming an army of reliably angry, paranoid, racists chumps.  But being thieves, when harvest time came, the con men could not help bringing the knives out and cutting each other's balls over who gets the lion's share of the boodle.

If fact, the pie fight over who gets to pluck the wingnut pigeons has gotten so screechy and public, for awhile there the pigeons almost figured out that they're pigeons.

Almost.

...

The Des Moines Register reported Friday morning that some Iowa Republicans believe Cruz is the embodiment of the war inside the GOP. They see him as the tip of the spear of anti-establishment rage that is tearing apart the coalition of Republicans that has existed since the Reagan era: fiscal conservatives, social conservatives and national security conservatives.

If Cruz were to run for president, his campaign might leave him with only the fiercest tea party defenders, those center-right voters and political strategists say.

In a 45-minute speech, Cruz said over and over that working “collectively” is the only way to protect the nation from those who want to impose health insurance mandates, pile on more national debt, assault gun rights and hurt other constitutional rights.

It was the GOP’s failure to stand together, he said, that killed the effort to defund Obamacare.

“We didn’t accomplish our ultimate policy goal in this battle, and we didn’t because unfortunately a significant number of Senate Republicans chose not to unite and stand side by side with House Republicans,” he said. “Had we stood together I’m convinced the outcome of this fight would be very, very different. But listen, none of us ever thought that taking on the Washington establishment was going to be easy.”

He added: “Right now I’m more encouraged than ever.”

As Cruz took the stage, the audience greeted him with a 36-second standing ovation.

...

Professional Left Podcast #203

"I don’t swear for the hell of it. Language is a poor enough means of communication. We’ve got to use all the words we’ve got. Besides, there are damn few words anybody understands."

-- Henry Drummond, Inherit the Wind

Links: 

• The pope says stuff he would have been burned for five centuries ago.
• Lobbyists have money to burn.
• Paul Ryan also has money to burn.
• Ohio State GOP Rep. Matt Lynch is indeed a mighty pile of stupid.

Da' money goes here:

Time Was

to uncover the nefarious assholery of public officials, you had to at least wire up a crooked lawyer or two and bug the right booth at Counsellors Row:

FBI `Sting` Targeting Corrupt Judges, Zoning
December 02, 1989 By John O`Brien and Ray Gibson. Tribune reporter James Strong contributed to this article.

...
As the FBI monitored his activities, Cooley, a friend and legal adviser to politicians, acted as a broker for people who wanted to fix court cases or to influence the awarding of zoning changes by city officials, according to the sources.

``This was a guy who could use his powerful friends to get what he wanted,`` said one person familiar with the inquiry.

The investigation, one of the most widespread undercover cases in Chicago`s history, has turned up evidence that judges have continued to take payoffs despite the public spotlight cast by Operation Greylord, which has led to the indictments of 84 people, including judges and prominent lawyers, sources said.

The key targets of the investigation started by Cooley include Ald. Fred Roti (1st), businessman Pat Marcy, at least two Cook County Circuit Court judges and organized crime and gambling figures, the sources said.

Sources familiar with the case said Cooley was an extraordinarily valuable informant whose relationship to politicians and organized crime figures enabled him to provide tips that have led to gambling raids in the 1st Ward over the past year.

His information also helped attorneys for the U.S. Justice Department`s Organized Crime Strike Force persuade a judge to grant permission to bug a booth at Counsellors Row, a downtown restaurant frequented by politicians.
...

But these days all you need to do is sit within earshot of the former director of the NSA when he gets all loud and braggy.

"Bad Writing is More Than a Matter of Shit Syntax and Faulty Observation;" (UPDATE)

“...bad writing usually arises from a stubborn refusal to tell stories about what people actually do― to face the fact, let us say, that murderers sometimes help old ladies cross the street.”

― Stephen King, On Writing

Ever since David Brooks firmly staked out the genre of Republican Alternate History for himself with his award-ready series of  "Whig Fan Fiction Revisionist Adventures for the Young and Non-Very-Bright Conservative", the question political science fiction fans have asked themselves has been,"Whither the future?"

Where is the lean and hungry young wingnut with the chops to make up fake Republican tomorrows with the same fact-free, devil-take-the-hindmost gusto with which Mr. Brooks has remade its yesterdays?

And because there was apparently literally nothing else to write about, Mr. "Axis-of-Evil" took his his shot at that title with, "How Teddy WreckSpin Became Preznit Because Dirty Hippies."

No kidding.

How Ted Cruz Can Win in 2016

by David Frum Oct 25, 2013 5:45 AM EDT
Forget what you think you know about the next presidential election. David Frum details how the junior senator from Texas can take the White House.

...

In a frantic effort to mobilize supporters, the Democrats abruptly veered toward more populist economics. Senator Elizabeth Warren began to demand not just fines on JP Morgan, but the actual breakup of too-big-to-fail financial institutions. Too little, too late: instead of the gains they’d been counting on in 2013, the Democrats lost 15 House seats and control of the Senate in November 2014.

That defeat galvanized something in progressive Democrats...

In the painful aftermath of 2014, many Democrats were ready to hear that the party had been defeated because President Obama had been too cautious in his policies and too remote in his style...

The Clinton-Warren fight divided and weakened Democrats. Many pundits compared the contest to the Humphrey vs. Kennedy fight of 1968...

Clinton Democrats took for granted that Cruz was unelectable. They had not appreciated how badly the 2014 recession would hurt them. Disenchanted Latinos and young people stayed home. So did down-market white males, who seemed to react to Clinton with almost visceral dislike. In the presidential election of 2008, almost 58% of eligible voters had turned out, the highest level since the extension of the vote to 18-year-olds. In 2016, turnout dropped below 50% for the first time since 1996.

Republicans turned back the clock on the Obama election map. They recaptured Florida and Virginia, North Carolina and Nevada, Ohio and Iowa: moving back into the red column all the states won by George W. Bush in 2004. It was a desperately narrow victory, but it was enough.

Science fiction works when readers are convinced by the author's command of the material to take that leap of "poetic faith" that Coleridge called a "willing suspension of disbelief".

It does not work when the author's obsessive need to slap around imaginary hippies overrides every other consideration.

It is also worth noting that less than two weeks ago over at his other, other writing gig the same David Frum was wringing his hands over how teddible, teddible it was that Ted Cruz and his Army of Stupid were destroying the good name and future prospects of the Party of Bush and Cheney and Palin and Limbaugh:

...
Right now, tea party extremism contaminates the whole Republican brand. It's a very interesting question whether a tea party bolt from the GOP might not just liberate the party to slide back to the political center -- and liberate Republicans from identification with the Sarah Palins and the Ted Cruzes who have done so much harm to their hopes over the past three election cycles.

It's worth repeating over and over again. Add Todd Akin in Missouri and Richard Mourdock in Indiana, Sharron Angle in Nevada and Ken Buck in Colorado, Christine O'Donnell in Delaware and Joe Miller in Alaska -- and you have half a dozen Senate races lost to the GOP by extremist nominations.
...

On the other hand, whatever some obscure tin-cup Liberal blogger may think of Mr. Frum's efforts, he remains a very well-paid "...contributing editor at Newsweek and The Daily Beast and a CNN contributor" who glides almost effortlessly from one gig to the next.  

And that counts for a lot.

UPDATE:

Commentor asks how I would predict the near-term political future.

My answer is that, as a fiction writer, I am irresistibly drawn to a scenario which keeps the House barely under the control of the GOP by 2-3 seats (thus making poor health and threats to change parties consequential plot points), and/or the Senate dead-even with Joe Biden taking up permanent residence there because he has to break every tie for the next 2 years.

If 2014 ends (as I think it will) with the GOP still able to hang onto enough power to obstruct everything, we can expect nothing but deadlock, show trials and Fox-induced wingnut hysteria over fake scandals like "Benghaaazi!" and the IRS.

Then, once the 2016 race kicks in hard, I believe Obama will use his last two years to consolidate his legacy, sharpen his attacks on GOP nihilism and sabotage and (if I were writing this as a West Wing episode and I wanted to lock down the youth vote and get some Libertarian-Lites to give my party a second look) use his executive power to pardon every single person doing time for a non-violent marijuana crime.

UPDATE:

FYI, in the scant few hours since Mr. Frum hit "Publish", his article has garnered over 1000 1100 1200 1300 comments.