Sunday Morning Comin' Down

Crazy old man shouting at clouds edition.

Jack Welch was once one of the most powerful people on Earth.

And until it sold its remaining shares to Kabletown, for a long time his company -- General Electric -- owned 49% of David Gregory outright.

All of which, seen glancingly and from a distance, can make it easy to forget that Mr. Welch is out of fucking his mind.

Fortunately for us (and for future historians who will document the terminal stages of American Conservative dementia), Welch's kids have not yet managed to take away his keys to The Twitter. Which means that every now and then, Grandpa Simpson straps an onion to his belt and takes to The Internets to very publicly shout at imaginary Liberal Media Conspiracy clouds. 

My old friend David Gregory on @MTP should just wear a DNC tee shirt and save a clean shirt and tie for Monday office meeting
— Jack Welch (@jack_welch) April 6, 2014

Meanwhile, Meet the Press continues its quest to become the Friendster of the Sunday Mouse Circus.

'Meet The Press' Gets More Bad Ratings News

The Huffington Post | by Katherine Fung

Posted: 04/03/2014 4:09 pm EDT

It's official: "Meet the Press" just came in third place for the third quarter in a row.

CBS News' "Face the Nation" and ABC News' "This Week" topped the NBC News show in both total viewers and the key A25-54 demo, according to the latest Nielsen ratings. The news was not surprising, given that "Meet the Press" came in third for five out of the past six weeks. "Face the Nation" was the number one show, with an average of 3.348 million total viewers and 980,000 in the key demo...

Leading the death spiral this week was Harold Fraud Junior, who continues to prove that he is one of the most committed Both Siderists -- 

HAROLD FORD JR:

The most bothersome part of the portrait and picture this week, I think the White House was right to talk about the numbers.  But they shouldn't be doing a victory lap right now.  There's still problems with this.  There is confusion around this.  Those kind of ads will continue to run across the country. And the question becomes:  when the people have the courage to say what's working and what's not working, to just make the case that, as the president I think tried to make eloquent and more people are getting health care, how can you be opposed to that, I don't think anyone's opposed to that.  The questions are legitimate ones, I think, raised by John [Sununu] and frankly, legitimately raised by Kathleen [Parker].

-- and very finest Wall Street big-money bidets in all the land (emphasis added)!

HAROLD FORD JR:

[Sheldon Adelson] has every right to do what he chooses to do.  And far be it from me to try to tell him.  I think your discussion you had with McCutcheon and the president of-- Weissman there about these-- money is there.  All this decision did was to try to redirect some of the flow of it.  And anyway, I think any chance you have to re-empower the political parties, which are accountable, the money is transparent, they foster kind of a coalition kind of thinking around issues, I think is a positive thing.

Now, if you take Weissman at his word, and this is a disaster, and you take Breyer at his word, Justice Breyer, then perhaps this will invite a kind of confusion and chaos and collapse of the system that will force us to change altogether.  But this decision doesn't alarm me like it has alarmed some of my Democratic friends.  In fact, I think it will empower candidates, empower political individual campaigns, which, in the long run, having run a campaign, along with John, I'd much rather have the transparency and be accountable that way, as opposed to having outside groups come in that I have to answer to.

Over on the ABC, the Neocon Outlet Mall Hour with George Schistosomiasis 

continues to let its utter contempt for its viewers show by once again giving face-time to America's foremost grifting bomb-thrower and "Advocate of civilization … definer of civilization … Teacher of the rules of civilization … arouser of those who form civilization … Organizer of the pro-civilization activists … leader (possibly) of the civilizing forces.”



Because for reasons no one dares to explain, the Gingrich Rules are always in effect.

Also, Tom Friedman appears to believe that Rahm Emanuel is a hobbit who ran back to the shire because of bloggers.

Or something (h/t Heather at Crooks 'n Liars):

FRIEDMAN: Right. I think of the quality of the senators and congress people I dealt with when I came here 20 years ago on foreign affairs how different it is. You know, Bob, I was thinking the other day that when archeologists a thousand years from now dig down to this layer, they're going to puzzle over something, the way we did when we dug down to the Roman layer.

They're gonna say, wait a minute, the president's chief of staff, arguably the second most powerful man in America, quit his job to go run (not get the job) run for office in a Midwestern city. That's Rahm Emanuel who went to run for mayor of Chicago. Can you imagine someone who was an advisor to Caesar quitting his job to go run for Mayor of Carthage, okay? So why did he do that?

I think one reason he did it is, well, obviously, we've got the gerrymandering of political districts, which is a huge problem, over and above all the things that have already been said. I think there's something else going on, which is to be in public life today, in the world of Twitter, Facebook, blogging, whatnot is so unpleasant.

...

Dear Tommy,

Chicago is not just another "Midwestern city". It is the third largest city in the American Empire and the home base of the President of the United States. And being mayor of that city has been the political dream of Rahmses --



-- since back in the day when he had 10 fingers and blushed at people saying "fuck".

Then again, from within the walls of Friedman's Imperial Palace

I guess we all look like ants.