Professional Left Podcast #221

"He who wishes to be obeyed must know how to command.” 

-- Niccolo Machiavelli

 Links:

• Senate bill on John McCain 

Da' money goes here:

The Piano Has Been Drinking

And when we say "Piano" we mean "Noonan".

And when we say "Drinking" we mean "Drinking".

This from Wonkette will suffice , until Tengrain can unpack another case of buckshot:

Peggy Noonan Stares Into Her Highball Glass, Wonders What Is Becoming Of America, Guzzles Highball

...The air in her apartment had grown musty and stale, the alarmed squawking of the Fox News hosts emanating from her television had become white noise. The terrible Moor still occupied the White House and a plague of liberalism had descended upon the land, blanketing it like Hirohito’s Imperial Army rolling through Manchuria. All was darkness! All was despair! What was left for a leading intellect of the conservative movement but to be really really snarky about it?

As uncharitable as it may be to say it, it is nonetheless true: there really is nothing funnier than the bizarre longevity of Peggy Noonan's sharp and giddy down-spiraling slalom from being Reagan's speechwriter

 to a WSJ/"This Week..." barfly who navigates an "argument" in the same way this poor boob



navigates a booking room.

It's easier to understand Peggers' career if you compress the totality of it -- John Cheever-style -- into a single, wild, dissolute night.  During the first half came the carefree hours spent talking ever louder and faster, pounding shot after shot after shot of ideological Goldschlager and GOP talking points with feverish, hedonistic abandon.



But now -- deep into the second half of her bender --we find  Peggers the cold, deserted 4:00 AM of her career doubled over in the alley, puking gobbets of glittering-covered wingnut sick into any handy dumpster.

It's a pretty icky sight, but because the Ever-Flowing Teats of the Wingnut Welfare All-Mother are Infinite, it remains no barrier to gainful Beltway employment.

And, from just the right perspective, it's also vastly entertaining.

The Asshole Party*

From Brother Charles Pierce:

Senate Republicans Kill a Bill to Expand Veterans' Benefits

WASHINGTON -- It's not until you watch it happen close up that the way things do not get done in the World's Legislative Body becomes well and truly nauseating. This afternoon, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont brought forth a carefully crafted bill to provide $21 billion in new veterans benefits over the next decade. These included medical benefits, education benefits, and job-training. It contained 26 provisions that came from the Republican members of the Veterans Affairs Committee, which Sanders chairs. It was so wide-ranging that it contained a provision that would eliminate a rule prohibiting the Veterans Administration from covering in vitro fertilization on behalf of veterans whose wounds prevent them from conceiving a child in the usual manner. There was a time, and not so long ago, when both parties would fall all over themselves to help America's veterans. How many platitudes are we going to hear on the stump between now and November about America's Heroes and Our Wounded Warriors? This bill was a put up or shut up moment.

It failed.

Badly.

Only two Republicans were willing to vote with Sanders, and the bill died a procedural death. The final straw was an attempt by Republican legislators to hang an amendment onto the bill calling for increased sanctions on Iran. There was also some cheap bullshit thrown around about the budget, most notably by Senator Jefferson Davis Beauregard Sessions of Alabama. There also was, spectacularly, some debate time taken up by, believe it or not, Benghazi, Benghazi!, BENGHAZI!

...

These are not people who can be cajoled or tricked or persuaded into doing the right thing ever.  These are not people who can be compromised with.   These are not people with whom you can have a "debate" in any meaningful sense.  At the end of the day, the GOP is just a party full of loud, bigoted, pig-ignorant assholes, who have been gathered under one roof and weaponized with money and media because, as it turns out, there are just enough loud, bigoted, pig-ignorant assholes wandering the land to wreck the country if they all really put their backs into it.

And some really rich, really terrible people really, really want them to put their backs into it.

As one disreputable pundit has repeatedly pointed out, we have once again become a house divided against itself, and such a structure cannot stand.

We cannot endure permanently half-Fox and half-free.

We will become all one thing, or all the other.

* The worst of my typos have been corrected.  Usually I let them go, but I banged this post out very fast and it went up full of really distracting verbal potholes.  Thanks to commmentor Psychoticus Rex for calling this to my attention.

Dear Esquire

If you're going to risk listing "THE 10 BEST AIRBORNE ACTION MOVIES" but you're not going award either "Wings"



or "The Giant Claw"



with so much as an Honorable Mention, then how can I possibly trust your opinion on other matters, like politics, and driving apparel, and semi-nude actresses whose previous professions may surprise me.

Signed,

A concerned citizen

The Clout's In The Cradle

"He`s just dumb as a rock. If his name were Richard M. Camper, he`d be working in the post office."

-- Rob Warden, editor of Chicago Lawyer,

writing about Hizzoner Richard M Daley in 1989 (?)

Anyone who has spent more than airport layover time in Chicago knows that politics, power and privileged in my former home are dynastic.  As you or I might leave a stamp collection or our car to the kids, in the Daley family, clout is bequeathed.  Same with the Jackson family.  And the Mells.  And the Madigans.  And the Strogers,  And the so forths.  And the so ons.  

Of course, like any other kind of inherited wealth, the blood tends to run thin by the third generation. (or, to quote Jack Donaghy) --

We are an immigrant nation! The first generation works their fingers to the bone making things, the next generation goes to college and innovates new ideas, the third generation... snowboards and takes improv classes.

-- but to this day, if you crack open a copy of Mike Royko's indispensable "Boss" you will be amazed at how little the last names of the key players have changed.

Chicago is so proficient at the art of clout that we had an Alderman -- Isaac Carothers Jr. -- who was convicted and did a two year bit for virtually the same crime his father -- Isaac Carothers Sr. -- committed when he was an Alderman. When last seen, former-alderman and ex-offender Isaac the Younger was... wait for it... kicking around the idea of running for a seat on the Cook County board!

Back before I figured out that almost no one was interested in the subject, I used to write a lot about this particular aspect of Chicago/Illinois politics.

Hell, I used to write song parodies about it:

And so, with apologies to Harry Chapin...

3...2..1...

Rat's In The Boodle

A child arrived just the other day,

Not on the clout list, but dat's ok,

But there were plans to hatch and bribes to pay,

He learned to cheat while I was away

He was scamming 'fore I knew it and as he grew

He'd say "I'm going to be like you Dad,

An Al-der-man just like you."

Chorus :

Another rat's in the boodle,

Just like Silver Shovel

Nobody'd believe dis shit

If you put it in a novel,

"When you gonna run son?" "I don't know when."

"We'll get together then,

We'll get you on da clout list then."

My son turned ten just the other night

Showed him how to rig a vote up good 'n tight.

Will you teach me good and bad?

I said, "Not today,

I got thumbs to bend." He said, "Dat's OK."

And he walked away, but his smile never dimmed

Said, "I'm going to be like him, yeah.

An Al-der-man just like him."

Chorus :

Another rat's in the boodle,

Just like Silver Shovel

Nobody'd believe dis shit

If you put it in a novel,

"When you gonna run son?" "I don't know when."

"We'll get together then,

We'll get you on da clout list then."

He got into office just the other day,

Another Daley-man, and I just had to say,

"Son, I'm proud of you, now about my bail..."

He shook his head (looks like I stay in jail)

"What I'd really like, dad, is your sucker list.

I'm in need of some ducats dat won't be missed."

Chorus :

Another rat's in the boodle,

Just like Silver Shovel

Nobody'd believe dis shit

If you put it in a novel,

"When you gonna run son?" "I don't know when."

"We'll get together then,

We'll get you on da clout list then."

I've since made parole, but now my son's been popped

I called him up to see how he copped

"I'd like to see you, if you don't mind."

He said, "Don't say nuthin weird 'cause they bugged this line.

Let's just say my new "job's" a hassle and da "kids" have da "flu"

But it's sure nice talking you Dad, it's been real nice talking to you."

And as I hung up the phone it occurred to me

He'd grown up just like me,

An Al-der-man just like me.

Chorus :

Another rat's in the boodle,

Just like Silver Shovel

Nobody'd believe dis shit

If you put it in a novel,

"When you gonna run son?" "I don't know when."

"We'll get together then,

We'll get you on da clout list then."

So, as longtime readers know, I am a great believer that Clout, in all of its many mutations and variations, rules our world.  And when you've worked long enough within whispering distance of its global headquarters you get so you expect to see it everywhere you look, and you are rarely disappointed. So imagine my complete lack of surprise at seeing this in The Daily Beast:

Get Elected, Get Your Kids Rich: Washington Is Spoiled Rotten

A governor’s daughter is made CEO without a MBA. A senator’s son starts a hedge fund right out of college. Democrats have joined Republicans in the new nepotism.

Joe Manchin’s daughter Heather was looking for a job. The now-senator and one-time governor of West Virginia was only a state level rep when he ran into Milan Pushkar—the head of Mylan Inc., a Fortune 500 pharmaceuticals company—at a West Virginia University basketball game [1]. Heather was hired for an entry-level position at the company soon after. Records show Mylan benefitted from millions of dollars worth of corporate tax breaks in the state during Manchin’s gubernatorial tenure. [2] And these days, after stints as Mylan’s director of government relations and strategic development, Heather Bresch (née Manchin) is the company’s CEO, one of Fortune’s 50 Most Powerful Women in Business [3]. All this without even an MBA—a 2008 investigation found that Bresch did not actually earn her degree from WVU as claimed. Officials had altered her official records and covered up for it, perhaps motivated by Mylan’s lucrative relationship with the University—co-founder Pushkar (Bresch’s business world fairy godfather) donated over $20 million [4] and had the football field named after him. [5]

Connected children of political families catching a break is something we Americans are plenty used to—there would be no Kennedy or Bush dynasties without the public’s acceptance that some people just raise their kids up all square-jawed and rolled shirtsleeves, ready to run for office. But the nexus of private business and politics is always one that’s skated over lightly in high school civics classes. Perhaps that’s why there was so much consternation over the recent revelations that Wall Street banks had hired the children of prominent Chinese politicians with hopes of currying favor with those who wield power over business decisions in the rising economic superpower. The hiring of so-called “Chinese Princelings” has been a widespread one in the banking community; JPMorgan Chase had a “Sons and Daughters” program [6] that separated applications of Chinese elites’ children from the wider pool and held them to less rigorous standards. Documents have been uncovered indicating that the bank directly tracked the hiring of influencers’ children to the success of business deals.

...

OK, two corrections.

First, what in the name of Whispering Vic Reyes do you mean, "Democrats have joined Republicans in the new nepotism."  Democrats, especially big city party bosses, pioneered modern political nepotism and cronyism.  Historically this was part of the bargain the Democratic Party struck with its largely-working-class voters (and even many of its would-be reformers): the Party was given enormous political power that would otherwise have be wielded almost exclusivity by and for established monies interests and, in exchange, the hoi polloi got decent jobs, some material improvements to their communities and better opportunities for their kids.  Richard J. Daley was explicit about why, despite its obvious corruptions and often-overt racism, he was 100% loyal to the Democratic Party: because it was the only party that would have let someone like Richard J. Daley join and rise to a position of influence (can't find the exact quote I was looking for at this time.)  Sayeth Richard the First:

The Democratic Party is the party that opened its arms. We opened them to every nationality, every creed. We opened them to the immigrants. The Democratic Party is the party of the people.

This was something up with which the average voter is usually willing to put...right up until the rich dauphins of inherited privilege start yapping about "merit", sneering at our threadbare social safety net as a hammock for moochers, and lecturing the Great Unwashed on the subject of pulling oneself up by one's bootstraps.  Once that starts happening, it's time for the pitchforks and torches.

Second, seriously, how in the name of Victoria Davey "Tori" Spelling could anyone write an entire article about nepotism in politics and the media without mentioning the amazing career of Young Luke Russert?  That's like "Moby Dick" without the whale.

The Ads Of My Youth

This Pancho Pantera ad was playing on Philippine teevee at around the time I was learning proper rotary phone use and etiquette in school.

Sit Down, You're Rockin' the Boat

Sole Survivor

Cursed with second sight.

Alan Pell Crawford, who was "present at the creation" of the modern Conservative Movement, believes now that the Pineapple Ice Cream Conservatism of Andrew Sullivan's dorm-room-bong-a-thon imagination never actually existed (with emphasis added):

Twilight of the Right

When conservatism became a movement, it lost its soul.

By ALAN PELL CRAWFORD • February 26, 2014

...

I’d like to think that a movement incapable of critical self-examination is doomed, but I have been wrong before. As late as 1992, I wrote in the Washington Post that the Reagan years were a period in which conservatism “was transformed from a philosophy of cautious stewardship into an ideology that encourages individuals to pursue self interest, whatever the consequences to others.” This, again, was probably wishful thinking. I’m no longer persuaded that American conservatism as it has existed for half a century has ever been a “philosophy of cautious stewardship.” I’m not even sure, given the magnitude of this country’s challenges, that “cautious stewardship” will be good enough.

So, in light of my sorry record, I will not hazard a guess to the movement’s future. But I have been to a few Conservative Political Action Conferences through the years, and these annual hootenannies offer some perspective on how conservatism is faring. I attended my first in 1975, if memory serves, and the most recent in 2013. I get to observe how the movement is changing—there are ever bigger crowds—and to see old acquaintances, if not exactly friends, and always admire the orators’ ability to strike a balance between scaring their audiences half to death and assuring them that, with hard work, they will completely annihilate their enemies.

There are always the usual chicken hawks, of course, but I have also noticed, as some of the veterans of these events get up in years, something comparable to chicken hawks on the domestic side. There are the people who don’t go to church themselves but think religion is necessary for others. There are serial monogamists like Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich who express deep-felt concerns about the institution of marriage. There’s the divorced and childless old roué who worries that other white people aren't reproducing in sufficient quantities to maintain their positions of privilege and influence.

But at last year’s CPAC, the venerable Stan Evans offered these worry warts cause for hope. Conservatives might not be having babies fast enough, he said, but liberals “are aborting themselves out of existence.” I am still figuring out whether conservatives should think this is a good thing. If it’s true, they should be able to relax and let the demographics work their will, though that seems a rather Darwinian way to get the job done. I also wonder how it might factor into their “pro-life agenda.”

I’m not sure Evans or his cohorts have given the matter serious thought. But this grisly nightmare vision might well represent the nadir of a “movement” that in its opposition to totalitarianism once claimed a more humane approach to politics, rooted in a respect for the dignity of the individual. This disintegration was many things—but not unpredictable.

Seems like I've been hearing this same fucking prognosis.
From a group called "Liberals".
For decades.
On the other hand, since we're all dead, I suppose it no longer matters who was right and who was Conservative:

Liberals Face A Hard Day’s Knight?

That’s a pretty pathetic knight up there on the cover of the March issue of Harper’s Magazine. Battered and defeated, his shield in pieces, he’s slumped and saddled backwards on a Democratic donkey that has a distinctly woeful — or bored, maybe — countenance. It’s the magazine’s sardonic way of illustrating a powerful throwing down of the gauntlet by political scientist Adolph Reed, Jr. He has challenged the nation’s progressives with an article in the magazine provocatively titled “Nothing Left: The Long, Slow Surrender of American Liberals.”

...

OK, so Conservatism died. 
Long ago.  
Then its rotting corpse fell off of Mount Reagan. 
Right onto Liberalism. 
Which also died.


Very sad.

Nothing to do now but go through their pockets looking for change.

Change we can believe in.

That Apostate Conservative Dollar Is A Good Dollar

In case you were wondering (and I know you were) what Andrew Sullivan's most popular posts were on any given day, he helpfully tracks them for you.

His 2nd most popular post yesterday began as follows:

For a long time now, the Republican party has essentially decided to ride the tiger of right-wing extremism to electoral victories and total Washington gridlock. The real action on the right side of the aisle has been on the far right, with each new anti-Obama movement and eruption out-doing the last in terms of upping the ante. Shock-jocks have defined the message, aided and abetted by key leadership figures. And so, in the latest manifestation, we have the former vice-president, Dick Cheney, telling Sean Hannity the following last night:

They peddle this line that now we’re going to pivot to Asia, but they’ve never justified it. And I think the whole thing is not driven by any change in world circumstances, it is driven by budget considerations. He would much rather spend the money on food stamps than he would on a strong military or support for our troops.

So a former vice-president is out there, saying the president prefers to spend money on food stamps than on “support for our troops.”...

Ahem.

Once again I feel obliged to point out that Mr. Sullivan's "True Conservative" critique of the state of the Party of Jefferson Davis has now become 100% interchangeable with the Liberal critique of American Conservatism going back several decades now.  Which is progress of a sort.  Or would be if Mr. Sullivan weren't so intractably committed to pretending that American Liberals and the things American Liberals have said and done all along do not exist.

It's almost as if he feared that a late-life admission of his American Liberalism would carry with it some kind of social stain.  Perhaps even impede his career.  And so instead he remains in a kind of...oh...closet, I guess you'd call it; indulging in de facto American Liberal values and beliefs on the down-low, which continuing to present a Conservative face to the world.

Holding that Conservative closet door shut with all him might, while pretending that American Liberals don't really exist.

Except for one, of course.

Except for one.

Also (and apropos of nothing) this ad on Mr. Sullivan's site just cracks me the Hell up for a lot of different reasons:

The Deadly (British) Viper Character Assassination Squad

With the vast resources of an entire intelligence apparatus at their command, the Brits apparently decided to go low-tech and teach their agents Jedi mind tricks and how to "troll" on "blogs" in a way that is "mean" to "people they don't like" using crappy PowerPoints (are there any other kind?) packed with:

• General observations about human nature apparently drawn from an Introduction to Sociology textbook, at least one John le Carré novel, Eric Weber's 1970 best-seller "How to Pick Up Women", and a few of the lesser works of David Mamet ,
• Some stock photos:


Scary Spy Powerpoint Slide





Original iStock image

And, of course, the inevitable typos:

What I spy with my little eye is something...definitely...creepy.

And as old as espionage itself.

But as many times as I have read this, I can't spot anything that is actually illegal, or any actual examples of any actual person coming to harm, or even figure out based on the material as it was published if this was even a real thing, or a proposed program, or just some goofy idea someone was pitching to management, or what.  In fact, you have to read all the way to the bottom to find out that First Look has no idea what the context of any of this was either:

We submitted numerous questions to GCHQ, including: (1) Does GCHQ in fact engage in “false flag operations” where material is posted to the Internet and falsely attributed to someone else?; (2) Does GCHQ engage in efforts to influence or manipulate political discourse online?; and (3) Does GCHQ’s mandate include targeting common criminals (such as boiler room operators), or only foreign threats? 

As usual, they ignored those questions and opted instead to send their vague and nonresponsive boilerplate...

What is genuinely charming about this story is that, of all the (presumably) skajillions of tales available for the telling via Mr. Snowden's trove of stolen documents, First Look chose to run the one that would most richly oxygenate the Purity Angels' First Article of Faith -- that anyone anywhere who offers even the mildest critique of anything coming from the keyboard of Mr. Greenwald is obviously a paid gummint sockpuppet, or unpaid dupe.

As usual, if you have anything substantive to add to this discussion, the comment section is open.

However, if all you have is more drive-by yawping about my general awfulness, let us stipulate that I am the lowest of the low. I get it.  So this time either go find another outlet for your scribbles, or go piss up a rope.

Popeye Explains Bitcoin

From the New York Times:

Apparent Theft at Mt. Gox Shakes Bitcoin World
By NATHANIEL POPPER and RACHEL ABRAMSFEB. 25, 2014

The most prominent Bitcoin exchange appeared to be on the verge of collapse late Monday, raising questions about the future of a volatile marketplace.

On Monday night, a number of leading Bitcoin companies jointly announced that Mt. Gox, the largest exchange for most of Bitcoin’s existence, was planning to file for bankruptcy after months of technological problems and what appeared to have been a major theft. A document circulating widely in the Bitcoin world said the company had lost 744,000 Bitcoins in a theft that had gone unnoticed for years. That would be about 6 percent of the 12.4 million Bitcoins in circulation.

While Mt. Gox did not respond to numerous requests for comments, and the companies issuing the statement scrambled to determine the exact situation at Mt. Gox, which is based in Japan, the news helped push the price of a single Bitcoin below $500 for the first time since November, when it began a spike that took it above $1,200.

But at the same time that the news about Mt. Gox was emerging, a New York firm announced plans to create an exchange that could draw the world’s largest banks into the virtual currency market for the first time.

The new exchange is being put together by SecondMarket, which rose to fame a few years ago after creating a platform for buying and selling shares of companies like Twitter and Facebook before they went public.

Without the trouble at Mt. Gox, the SecondMarket plans would have been seen as a major boon for virtual currencies, providing a potential entry point into the Bitcoin market for large banks, which have so far avoided virtual currencies as their price has skyrocketed.

Barry Silbert, SecondMarket’s chief executive, said that he had already talked with several banks and financial companies about joining the new exchange, along with financial regulators, and that he hoped to have it in operation this summer.

But plans for any new venture will be tested by the collapse of Mt. Gox, which could shake the faith of early Bitcoin adopters. Ryan Galt, a blogger who writes frequently about Bitcoin and was one of the first to circulate the news about Mt. Gox, wrote on Monday: “I do believe that this is one of the existential threats to Bitcoin that many have feared and have personally sold all of my Bitcoin holdings.”

On Monday, Mt. Gox took down all of its previous posts on Twitter, one day after its chief executive, Mark Karpeles, resigned from the board of the Bitcoin Foundation, a nonprofit that advocates for virtual currencies.

...

We Join David Brooks' Evening Improv Class Already In Progress...

Looks like Mr. Brooks let one of the interns write his column today.

Looks like that intern got very drunk first.

Fake Putin Diary!

Oh dear Lord.  Please.  Pleeeease don't try to be funny.

Dear Diary, 

I am surrounded by idiots. I create the greatest Olympics in human history. The Russian team I selected wins the medal count. I do all this while propping up Assad in Syria and sexting half the athletes in the Olympic Village. Meanwhile, that tool Yanukovych can’t even manage to keep himself in power in Kiev...

Oh Sweet Break-Dancing Baba Yaga, please make this stop.

And if you can't make it stop, please make sure this poor man doesn't suddenly break Yiddish in the middle of what is supposed to be Putin's Inside Supervillain Voice:

That yutz has created two giant vulnerabilities for me, a regional one and a domestic one...

Hello Jackie Masonovitch!

It just gets worse after that.

And then still worse.

Then much worse, building into a kind of wild, blazing pileup of aching unfunniness, stranding onlookers on the shoulder, incredulous, praying for it to be over --

-- holding out a little hope that, just maybe, the serial, JiffyPop shee-BLAMS of awful will calm down, and, just maybe, Mr. Brooks will limp this column over into the breakdown lane of his more quotidian forms of bad writing.

Nope...

Suddenly, I find myself in a moment of extreme vulnerability. Fortunately, I’ve got one of the greatest leaders in human history on my side: myself.

And so rolls on this amazingly inept...whatever the Hell this is: gobbets of interior-monologue villainy so cartoonish it virtual Bwahahahas!!! --

The naïve Westerners (forgive the redundancy) think Ukraine is about democratic ideals, or whether the country will turn West or East. Please. There is no room for ideals in my worldview.

-- while twirling a yard-long mustache and menacingly stroking a devil-cat --

-- until all anyone can hear is...

Good-Bye to All That

Alec Baldwin burns down his blog.

From People:

Alec Baldwin Says He's 'Done' with Public Life

By STEPHEN M. SILVERMAN

02/24/2014 at 06:15 AM EST

No stranger to voicing his strong opinions, Alec Baldwin is now saying he's had enough – of public life and New York City.

"I've lived this for 30 years, I'm done with it," the actor and former MSNBC host, 55, states in his bylined New York magazine cover story that hit Sunday night.

"I'm aware that it's ironic that I'm making this case in the media," he writes, "but this is the last time I'm going to talk about my personal life in an American publication ever again."

He blames some of the events of 2013, which, he concedes, "was actually a great year, because my wife and I had a baby. But, yeah, everything else was pretty awful."

Baldwin acknowledges 2013 had him challenging accusations of homophobia, which cost him his reputation, his gig on MSNBC (he calls the network "as superfluous, as Fox") and his faith in the media, which he dubs "Hate Incorporated."

"I haven't changed," he insists, "but public life has."

He also slams media personalities Anderson Cooper (the "self-appointed Jack Valenti of gay media culture," says Baldwin; Valenti ran the Motion Picture Association of America, which rated movies for their content) and Rachel Maddow. Baldwin calls her a phony and says she tried to get him fired from MSNBC.

"Now I loathe and despise the media in a way I did not think possible," he says. "Paparazzi today are part of a network that includes the Huffington Post and, much to my dismay, even NBC News, in their reliance on tabloid reporting."

...

So long, Alec.
We'll always have 30 Rock:

Predictably, Mr. Sullivan does his little end-zone dance, celebrating the public exit of virtually the only Liberal whose existence Mr. Sullivan would ever acknowledge...

...in post after post after vitriolic post.

Sunday Morning Comin' Down -- UPDATE

"Forgetfulness: A Gift of God bestowed upon debtors in compensation for their destitution of conscience."

-- Ambrose Bierce

Today, George Robert Stephanopoulos apparently could not stomach the idea of sharing his bathwater with both  the Moustache of Understanding




 and Bloody Bill Kristol.



So instead he delegated the honor of not projectile vomiting while introducing two of the most extravagantly wrong media slunkweasels in recent American history as experts in the subject on which both of them have been the most horribly, prodigiously wrong -- foreign policy -- to Martha Raddatz who, once, long ago, was a journalist.

It was awful.

But clearly the Beltway Conventional Wisdom Message of the Day was that anyone with huevos to stand in the way of gutting the social safety net Shall Be Denounced a crazy radical Lefty-Left extreme radical Leftist.

Because Both Sides!

Or something.

Needless to say, America's overflowing spittoon of Beltway Conventional Wisdom  was 100% on-board with that:

DAVID BROOKS:

Yes. And it's all bad for the country. (CHUCKLE) So what are the things that are going to help the economy in the near term? Immigration would be a huge boost for the economy. A fast-track trade deal across the Atlantic, across the Pacific, huge boost. Chained CPI would save a trillion dollars in the second decade off the federal budget debt.

So these are all gigantic, very good policies, where there is majority support and where, in the old days in Washington, you'd cobble together a bipartisan coalition and get rid of the fringes. But right now, the fringes have veto power over everything else, and nobody's found a solution to that.

So was Bob Schieffer (h/t Heather at Crooks and Liars):

SCHIEFFER: But you know, governor, I'm sure you would concede that you have those on the left who would take the party as far that way as some of the tea party folks want to take the Republican party on the right.

I mean, when the president comes out and says he's not going to touch entitlement reform, that's like waving a red flag in front of a bull to the Republicans. I mean... ugh... have we given up on trying to get anything done and compromising on anything?

In other words, just another Sunday at the zombie apocalypse

the used to be American journalism.

UPDATE:

Brother Charles Pierce unburdens himself:

...

We conclude this week at ABC, where The Clinton Guy Shocked By Blowjobs left the big chair to old pal Martha Raddatz again, and she hosted a discussion of the events in the Ukraine and elsewhere. She invited both Tom Friedman and Bill Kristol to share their thoughts, and the entire universe sailed over the event horizon of Ultimate Wrongness and never was seen again. Even though he's apparently developing another cockamamie scheme to divide the nations of the world into neat little categories -- the austerity-maddened European Union is dedicated to having "prosperous people"? Tell it to Greece. -- Friedman, at least, was realist enough to admit that a country's revolution belongs, for good or ill, to the people of that country, Kristol responded with a volley of platitudes from deep in 2002.

RADDATZ: So, Bill Kristol, step back for a moment here quickly and look at what Barack Obama's foreign policy legacy is up to this point, with Syria, with Ukraine, with Libya, with Iraq, with Afghanistan.

KRISTOL: With Iran, people around the world, I think, will want liberty to an amazing degree. And we've done very little to help them.

Gee, if only we hadn't squandered every shred of influence we had in that part of the world by embarking on an aggressive war based on a foundation of lies. We should find the people responsible for that cock-up and keep them away from positions of influence forever.

What's For Lunch?

A ham and feta omelet and roasted potatoes and onions with basil, sage and lavender, split halfsies with Blue Gal.

Jonah Goldberg: Still An Insult To Meatcake Everywhere

In today's episode of Real!Conservative!Science! Lucianne Goldberg's implacably horrid offspring demonstrates what happens when you rub two, disgruntled college students together:

At least that’s where Erin Ching, a student at Swarthmore College, seems to be coming down. Her school invited a famous left-wing Princeton professor, Cornel West...

Over at Harvard, another young lady has similar views. Harvard Crimson editorial writer Sandra Y. L. Korn recently called for getting rid of academic freedom in favor of something called “academic justice.”...

Then add in an ideological leap so goofy -- 

-- that only genuine, old-school halfwit would even attempt it:

One could easily dismiss these students as part of that long and glorious American tradition of smart young people saying stupid things. As Oscar Wilde remarked, “In America the young are always ready to give to those who are older than themselves the full benefits of their inexperience.”

But we all know that this nonsense didn’t spring ex nihilo from their imaginations. As Allan Bloom showed a quarter century ago...

There is a small "boom" and, after the smoke clears, voilà!  Yet another Terrifying, Omnipresent Liberal Conspiracy (Now with Extra Barbara Streisand at no additional charge to you the customer!) against those poor, oppressed Conservatives whose terrible ideas just can't get a fair hearing in this here Land of the Free:

...

Indeed, we are now up to our knees in this Orwellian bilge. Diversity means conformity...

And ideological diversity is the only kind of diversity the Left finds offensive.

Which brings us back to the sages of Swarthmore and Harvard. They at least understand that ideological diversity is actually, like, you know, a thing. They just think it’s a bad thing.

More pernicious, however, is that they believe the question of justice is a settled matter. We know what justice is, so why let serious people debate it anymore? The millennia-old dialogue between Aristotle, Plato, St. Augustine, Aquinas, Machiavelli, Rawls, Rorty, Hayek et al.? Shut it down, people. Or at least if the conversation heads in a direction where the Korns, Chings, and Streisands smell “oppression” — as defined solely by the Left — then it must not be “put up with.” Diversity demands that diversity of opinion not be tolerated anymore.

To say that I have found better formed arguments growing in the back of an old fridge would A) be to insult meatcake everywhere and B) is probably one of the many reasons that Jonah Goldberg has me blocked :-)

You have been blocked from following this account at the request of the user.

 So let us just say that the Ever-Flowing Teats of the Wingnut Welfare All-Mother are indeed Infinite.

Because There Is No One To Stop Them

No surprise that an Imaginary Conservatism like Andrew Sullivan would take out after Genuine American Conservative like Ted Nugent.

What makes it hilarious is that because Mr. Sullivan so fully a creature of the Beltway culture where it is virtually illegal to criticize a Conservative for doing something hideous without dragging some hapless Liberals into it, he was required by law to begin his comments about Nugent as follows:

We all know there are plenty of kooks out there – on both sides – who say repulsive, racist or bigoted things all the time.

Mr Sullivan -- who has been a Professional Conservative Public Intellectual since 1986 -- also had this to say about our political system --

And I cannot believe that a major political party in this country would not just refuse to repudiate it, but actively embrace Nugent as an ally in campaigns.

I'm tired so I will let this post of mine from 2005 do the remained of my talking for me:

It’s not much of a cheese shop,

Is it?

Such a long day I’ve have in the NaCl mines working my heart out for our ant overlords. And I spy with my little eye one Timmy Flanigan, Tyco lawyer lashed to the mast of the rapidly-sinking GOP Swag Ship -- the U.S.S. Jack Abramoff -- and latest in the Bush string of fecal federal appointment pearls to finally be exposed to the light of day.

Good times! But there’s a Python thing going on down below that's cracking me up and is hard to ignore. So before we wander down Bush Smackdown Boulevard, this quick...

A Moderate visits the GOP Cheese Shop.

MODERATE:
Good Morning.

MANWHORE:
Good morning, sir. Welcome to the Conservative Party Emporium.

MODERATE:
Ah, thank you my good man.

MANWHORE:
What can I do for you, sir?

MODERATE:
Well, I was, uh, sitting in the public library on Strom Thurmond Street just now, skimming through “The Conscience of a Conservative” by Barry Goldwater, and I suddenly came over all peckish.

MANWHORE:
Peckish, sir?

MODERATE:
Esurient.

MANWHORE:
Eh?

MODERATE:
(In a broad Yorkshire accent) Eee I were all hungry, like.

MANWHORE:
Ah, hungry.

MODERATE:
In a nutshell. And I thought to myself, 'a little Party ‘o Lincoln nibble will do the trick'. So I curtailed my Goldwatering activates, sallied forth, and infiltrated your place of purveyance to negotiate the vending of some Conservative comestibles.

MANWHORE:
Come again?

MODERATE:
I want some Traditional Republican values.

MANWHORE:
Oh, I thought you were complaining about the Swastika.

MODERATE:
Oh, heaven forbid. I am one who delights in all manifestations of the Foremost Constitutional Emendation.

MANWHORE:
Sorry?

MODERATE:
Ah like’s a nice torchlit rally, I do.

MANWHORE:
So Rush can go on ranting, can he?

MODERATE:
Most certainly. Now then, some conservative values please, my good man.

MANWHORE:
Certainly, sir. What would you like?

MODERATE:
Well, eh, how about a little Red Chinese bashing?

MANWHORE:
I'm afraid we're fresh out of Red Chinese bashing, sir.

MODERATE:
Oh never mind, how are you on Civil Liberties?

MANWHORE:
I'm afraid we never have that at the end of the week, sir. We get it fresh on Monday.

MODERATE:
Tish tish. No matter. Well, stout yeoman, four ounces of Budget Balancing, if you please.

MANWHORE:
Ah. It's been on order, sir, for two weeks. I was expecting it this morning.

MODERATE:
It's not my lucky day, is it? Er, Compassionate Conservatism?

MANWHORE:
Sorry, sir.

MODERATE:
Confronting racism? And segregation?

MANWHORE:
Normally, sir, yes. Today the van broke down.

MODERATE:
Ah. How about no nation-building?

MANWHORE:
Sorry.

MODERATE:
Tolerance? Privacy?

MANWHORE:
No.

MODERATE:
Any respect for Science, per chance?

MANWHORE:
No.

MODERATE:
Plurality?

MANWHORE:
No.

MODERATE:
Suspicion of Big Government?

MANWHORE:
No.

MODERATE:
Solid economic policies?

MANWHORE:
No.

MODERATE:
Pay as you go?

MANWHORE:
No.

MODERATE:
A Teddy Rooseveltian limit on monopolies and corporatism?

MANWHORE:
…No.

MODERATE:
Hatred of Fascism?

MANWHORE:
No.

MODERATE:
Optimism?

MANWHORE:
No.

MODERATE:
Free speech? Freedom of religion? Freedom of assembly? Petitioning you government for redress of grievances? Clean water? Clean air?

MANWHORE:
No.

MODERATE:
A strong military, perhaps?

MANWHORE:
Ah! We have a strong military, yes sir.

MODERATE:
You do! Excellent.

MANWHORE:
Yes, sir. It's, ah ..... it's a bit Rummy.

MODERATE:
Oh, I like it Rummy.

MANWHORE:
Well, it's very Rummy, actually, sir.

MODERATE:
No matter. Fetch hither le Armée Des Etats-Unis! M-mmm!

MANWHORE:
I think it's a bit Rummier than you'll like it, sir.

MODERATE:
I don't care how fucking Rummy it is. Hand it over with all speed.

MANWHORE:
Oh .....

MODERATE:
What now?

MANWHORE:
Iraq’s eaten it.

MODERATE:
Has he?

MANWHORE:
She, sir.

(pause)

MODERATE:
Fair elections?

MANWHORE:
No.

MODERATE:
Death with dignity?

MANWHORE:
No.

MODERATE:
Rational gun laws?

MANWHORE:
No.

MODERATE:
International respect?

MANWHORE:
No.

MODERATE:
Eisenhower’s “Just say “No” to the Military Industrial Complex?”

MANWHORE:
No, sir.

MODERATE:
You do have some Republican values, do you?

MANWHORE:
Of course, sir. It's a Republican Party, sir. We've got .....

MODERATE:
No, no, don't tell me. I'm keen to guess.

MANWHORE:
Fair enough.

MODERATE:
Er, staying out of other people’s bedrooms?

MANWHORE:
Yes?

MODERATE:
Ah, well, I'll have some of that.

MANWHORE:
Oh, I thought you were talking about me, sir. Manwhore Gannon. I spend rather a lot of time in other people’s bedrooms.

(pause)

MODERATE:
Honest day’s work for honest day’s pay?

MANWHORE:
Ah, not as such.

MODERATE:
Er, Term Limits?

MANWHORE:
No.

MODERATE:
Power sharing?

MANWHORE:
No.

MODERATE:
Requiring “…all laws that apply to the rest of the country also apply equally to the Congress”?

MANWHORE:
No.

MODERATE:
Due process?

MANWHORE:
No.

MODERATE:
Fair Markets?

MANWHORE:
No.

MODERATE:
No frivolous Presidential pardons?

MANWHORE:
No.

MODERATE:
Government transparency?

MANWHORE:
For Hillary and Health Care yes, but for Cheney and Energy Policy, not today, sir, no.

(pause)

MODERATE:

Ah, how about Zero Tolerance for Presidential lying?

MANWHORE:
Well, we don't get much call for it around here, sir.

MODERATE:
Not much ca- It's the single most famous Republican value in the world!
You impeached a man over it!

MANWHORE:
Not round here, sir.

MODERATE:
And what is the most popular value round here?

MANWHORE:
Personal Responsibility, sir.

MODERATE:
Is it.

MANWHORE:
Oh yes, sir. It's staggeringly popular in this manor, squire.

MODERATE:
Is it.

MANWHORE:
It's our number-one best seller, sir.

MODERATE:
I see. Ah, Personal Responsibility, eh?

MANWHORE:
Right, sir.

MODERATE:
All right. Okay. Have you got any, he asked expecting the answer no?

MANWHORE:
I'll have a look, sir ..... nnnnnnooooooooo.

MODERATE:
It's not much of a Republican Party, is it?

MANWHORE:
Finest in the district, sir.

MODERATE:
Explain the logic underlying that conclusion, please.

MANWHORE:
Well, it's so clean, sir.

MODERATE:
It's certainly uncontaminated by actual conservative values.

MANWHORE:
You haven't asked me about torture, sir.

MODERATE:
Is it worth it?

MANWHORE:
Could be.

MODERATE:
Have you- TAKE THAT FUCKING SWASTIKA DOWN!

MANWHORE:
(To skinheads) Told you so.

MODERATE:
Do you repudiate the use of torture as a matter of national policy?

MANWHORE:
No.

MODERATE:
That figures. Predictable really, I suppose. It was an act of purest optimism to have posed the question in the first place. Tell me:

MANWHORE:
Yes, sir?

MODERATE:
Have you in fact got any values here at all?

MANWHORE:
Yes, sir.

MODERATE:

Really?

(pause)

MANWHORE:
No. Not really, sir.

MODERATE:
You haven't.

MANWHORE:
No, sir, not a scrap. I was deliberately wasting your time, sir.

MODERATE:
Well, I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to shoot you.

Of course this is where our little parable runs off the rails because, like the broken-down crack-whores that they are, it doesn’t matter how many times or how brutally the GOP lies to Moderates or betrays them or fucks them over, and it doesn’t matter how high into the troposphere you pile the evidence of their stupidity and complicity and denial…they will always bellycrawl back the their abusers and beg to have their three remaining teeth punched down their throats.

Professional Left Podcast #220

"When you're traveling, you are what you are right there and then. People don't have your past to hold against you. No yesterdays on the road.” 

-- William Least Heat-Moon

 Links:

• Joe the Union Plumber
• Newt Gingrich never disappoints and never misses a meal.
• For the Party of Jefferson Davis, Obamacare is the Missouri Compromise
• The Big New Republican Rebranding Plan...looks remarkably like the old Rebranding Plan
• Watch on Amazon.com:  The Loving Story (Loving v Virginia Documentary) 

Da' money goes here:

About Last Night

(Video has a lead-off ad.)

It is unfortunate that during all the years he spent as the IT guy for Surveillance, Inc., Mr. Snowden never picked up on the fact that Russia is an actual police state ruled by an actual tyrant: a place where journalists are actually murdered in large numbers and non-heterosexual citizens are beaten in the streets with the imprimatur of the government.  Now, as Mr. Putin's guest, Mr. Snowden is no longer in a position where he can speak out about anything except the ugly excesses of Surveillance, Inc.

Of course, First Look Media is under no such constraints.

Given their vast resources, award-winning staff, and the global attention the launch of their enterprise has garnered, if they chose to, they could certainly afford to bring the full weight of that enterprise's power and prestige to bear on Mother Russia, and continue their non-stop coverage of Surveillance, Inc.

After all, even before he had Pierre Omidyar's $250M at this command, it took Glenn Greenwald less than one day to breeze past the bare-facts-as-they-were-then-know regarding the Boston Marathon bombing and put the entire tragedy in-harness to his larger agenda:

As usual, the limits of selective empathy, the rush to blame Muslims, and the exploitation of fear all instantly emerge 

The widespread compassion for yesterday's victims and the intense anger over the attacks was obviously authentic and thus good to witness. But it was really hard not to find oneself wishing that just a fraction of that compassion and anger be devoted to attacks that the US perpetrates rather than suffers. These are exactly the kinds of horrific, civilian-slaughtering attacks that the US has been bringing to countries in the Muslim world over and over and over again for the last decade, with very little attention paid

So we know Mr. Greenwald moves fast.  And so far as I can tell he has never curbed his use of language-as-Molotov-cocktail  for anyone.  So given that media from all over the world are covering Vladimir Putin's overt state oppression, his rampant domestic spying, his grotesque civil rights abuses, his stomping of journalists and his bloody meddling in the affairs of other countries, it certainty seems...weird...that planet Earth's most famous brand-new media enterprise -- which has been expressly launched to cover state oppression, domestic spying, civil rights abuses, the abuse of journalists and bloody meddling in the affairs of other countries -- would be staying so conspicuously silent on the subject.

Perhaps now that they have a journalist with actual Russian-reporting chops on-staff -- 

Taibbi grew up in the Boston, Massachusetts suburbs. He attended Concord Academy in Concord, Massachusetts, and graduated in 1992 from Bard College located in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, then spent a year abroad at Saint Petersburg Polytechnical University in Russia. His father is Mike Taibbi, an NBC television reporter.

...

Taibbi joined Mark Ames in 1997 to co-edit the controversial English-language Moscow-based, bi-weekly free newspaper, The eXile. Of Exile, Taibbi said, "We were out of the reach of American libel law, and we had a situation where we weren't really accountable to our advertisers. We had total freedom."[citation needed] In the U.S. media, Playboy magazine published pieces on Russia both by Taibbi and by Taibbi and Ames together during this time.

-- they can spare some of Mr. Taibbi's considerable talents and contacts to give Vladimir Putin's Russia the rigorous and unstinting journalistic hiding it so obviously deserves.