Allies, Allies Everywhere

All lies.  All lies.  Everywhere.

I love this story.

I love everything about it.

Not just because it's an old story, but because, since form follows function, it's always the same old story: one we've heard from dozens of grifters dozens of times. The words and pauses as well-worn by repetition as Mark Antony's funeral oration.

From NBC San Diego, June 22:

Tucker Carlson says he'll no longer support the Republican Party

Longtime conservative commentator Tucker Carlson said on a podcast that “there's no chance I would support the Republican Party" ahead of the November midterm elections, dismissing the political affiliation he's defended as a pundit for decades, including as one of Fox News Channel's most popular hosts.

“Not gonna support the Democratic Party,” Carlson was quick to add, speaking late last week on the show “Can't Be Censored.” “I don't know what I'm going to do.”

Carlson, who has amassed a large following on his own podcast since being fired from Fox News in 2023, has more recently diverged from the party, a disillusionment supercharged by President Donald Trump's decision to go to war with Iran in February.

Carlson supported Trump in 2024. After the war began, he apologized for supporting the then-presidential candidate and “misleading people," saying it wasn't intentional.

He’s repeatedly criticized the war as being at the behest of Israel at the expense of Americans, and attacked the party for failing to represent its own voters, citizens and nation.

“They are making decisions on the basis of other criteria, what’s best for this company, what’s best for Israel, what’s best for our donors,” he said. “That’s not just, like, they are off in the wrong direction, like, that is unacceptable, that’s treasonous, it’s immoral, it can’t continue."

“I’ve been a consistent defender for 35 years of the Republican Party, I mean very consistent defender, but there’s no defending this," he said. “So no, I’m out. And if I’m out, then I think a lot of other people are out.” 

It wasn't my fault.

I was misled.

I was bamboozled.

Sorry!

But Dems suck too so...

Hey, look who's angling for a spot in Tucker Carlson's future freakshow!

From The Hill:

Former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) on Monday joined another prominent ex-supporter of President Trump in pulling back their support for the Republican Party.

Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson said he “would not support” the GOP following his split with the Trump administration over the U.S. military operations against Iran. 

“Tucker is not the only one who is done supporting the Republican Party,” Greene wrote in a social media post.

“There is A LOT of us that are absolutely fed up and will not support a party that betrays its voters and country,” she continued. “That does not mean we are turning into Democrats either. But we are DONE with the America LAST Republican Party.” 

To bookend this little puppet show, you might remember this entry from the 'Same Tune, Different Decade' file."   Its from way back in 2016 when this racist scuttlefish leaped off what he believed to be Trump's sinking ship back.    

From CNN, October 11, 2016:

Glenn Beck: Opposing Trump is ‘moral’ choice — even if Clinton is elected

Conservative political commentator and media personality Glenn Beck said opposing Donald Trump is a “moral, ethical” choice — even if that results in Hillary Clinton becoming the next president.

The outspoken opponent of the GOP’s presidential nominee wrote on Facebook over the weekend that every voter had to decide for themselves what constitutes “a bridge too far,” after the release of footage last week in which Trump can be heard making lewd and sexually aggressive comments about women.

“It is not acceptable to ask a moral, dignified man to cast his vote to help elect an immoral man who is absent decency or dignity,” Beck wrote on Facebook in reference to Trump. “If the consequence of standing against Trump and for principles is indeed the election of Hillary Clinton, so be it. At least it is a moral, ethical choice.”

You might also remember that everybody covered it as if it were actual news instead of a con man trying to fold his tent and skip town ahead of John Law. 

You may also remember this same cockroach scuttling right back onto the deck of the USS Trump once it turned out that there were, in fact, just enough bigots and imbeciles in just enough of the right states to elect Donald Trump.  

It stops being tortured-conscience fence-straddling once you've torn down the fence and installed a turnstile so you can change sides any time it's convenient.

Burn The Lifeboats

Ew!

If this new revolution comes with show trials and tumbrels I might be down.

Otherwise, just...ew!

Burn The Lifeboats

The Deflecting Pool

The dirty old man is lying again.

From The New York Times:

President Trump says the peeling blue coating and algae blooms that mar his $16.4 million renovation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool are the fault of vandals working with “knives” in the “dark of night.”

But government documents obtained by The New York Times show that while National Park Service workers found two cuts in sections of foam between the pool’s expansion joints, those were not directly related to the “American flag blue” coating that is now peeling, or to the algae that has turned the pool a bright shade of green.

Even as the documents show workers were attempting to address deteriorating conditions, Trump administration officials were insisting publicly that the pool was pristine.

The pool had been drained, resealed and then refilled by June 5. Four days later, Park Service workers discovered holes, cracks and peeling caulking in parts of the pool, along with cuts in sections of the foam, according to the documents.

The cause of the cuts was unclear. While a June 9 report by the U.S. Park Police described the cuts as “razor blade slashes” made along a 20-foot-long stretch of the foam, the administration has yet to present evidence supporting that assertion. The documents reviewed by The Times described them as two 171-foot blade cuts but did not address how they were made.

By June 16, workers had noticed that chunks of blue sealant that covered the pool’s bottom were peeling and floating to the surface, the documents show. That sealant was separate from the foam in the pool’s expansion joints, which allow its concrete slabs to expand and contract.

The workers had also discovered that some devices installed to kill algae were not working as intended, according to the documents. And enormous algae blooms had turned portions of the pool bright green instead of dark blue.

But on June 15, Mr. Trump was still declaring the renovation a success, telling reporters that “I’m very good at building things and constructing things.”

...On Tuesday, the president said on social media that six people had been arrested, and seven others had been cited, for slashing the pool’s sealant with a “sharp knife or razors.”

“It was purposefully and criminally done, and somebody had to work very hard, probably in the dark of night,” he wrote.

Mr. Trump also told reporters on Monday, without offering evidence, that vandals had poured fertilizer into the pool to feed the algae.

Neither the Interior Department nor the White House would provide charging documents, citations or the names of anyone arrested. They did share the Park Police incident report, which said any suspect or suspects were unknown. The report also did not mention any damage to the pool’s blue sealant, nor did it describe any vandals dumping fertilizer.

...

The administration is setting up fencing around the site before the July 4 fireworks display for safety reasons, Ms. Martin said. But it’s going up earlier than originally planned because of what she called an “increase in vandalism by leftist activists.”

The Trump administration awarded two no-bid contracts for the Reflecting Pool renovations, bypassing the legally required process of seeking competitive bids because of what it called an urgent need to complete the project for events around the nation’s 250th birthday.

Even as this smelly, old bigot's brain rots in his skull, he still retains that one characteristic which unites all Republicans:   the categorical refusal to take responsibility for their own fuck ups at which they keep getting caught red-handed over and over again.

Burn The Lifeboats

Professional Left Podcast Episode 1001: 119 Billion Kilometers and Counting

“My characters hope for better lives.”  -- Octavia Butler

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Trump Signs Executive Order Banning Photosynthesis

Declares that henceforth the "nasty, low IQ holiday Juneteenth" will be replaced by a national "Victory over Algae" day.

MAGA meatheads rejoice because So! Much! Winning!  

Burn The Lifeboats

The Dogmas of the Quiet Past

I was pleased and proud to have this man as my president.  Pleased and proud to have his family as our First Family.  I was proud to vote for him for senator once and for president twice.  I was proud to have been one of the panelists who vetted him when he was still a relatively obscure state senator during his ultimately failed primary bid for the U.S. House of Representatives against incumbent Bobby Rush. In fact, I still have my ticket stub from his "Barack the Vote" fundraiser.  

However, as pleased and proud as I was to have Barack Obama as my president, it is also worth remembering the environment in which Obama governed, including taking a moment to remember much furious shit we Obama supporters took from our "allies" on the left.  In case you'd forgotten, here's a sample from a now-deadlinked post on Common Dreams from May, 2013.  I have an archive full of this stuff: 

When Obama finally declares martial law and announces the new Fascist States of American, O-bots like Maddow will eagerly put on their Nazi armbands -- cute little pastel hope & change swastikas, of course -- and join the goose-stepping parade. She's nothing but a propagandist and has absolutely no scruples whatsoever, just like the corporation that pays her, just like the "commander-in-chief" she props up with her lies and half-truths...

That kind of rhetoric was not unusual at the time: over-the-top rage from the whole Conservative media machine and from the dirtbag Left.  And in that environment, the Obama administration constituted a grand social experiment in offering the Republican party base -- which had been trained by Republican leadership and Conservative media to automatically loathe Democrats with an almost unhinged ferocity -- a different option.  Offering them compromise, thoughtfulness, dignity and respect, as well as policies that materially benefited them.

And that grand social experiment failed spectacularly.  Which is why it is worth our time and attention to diagnose why that experiment failed.  But to do that we'd have to journey into the past further back than 2016, which is something that pundits, the consulting class and our Never Trump "allies" almost all categorically refuse to do. 

That is because to examine the state of our union prior to 2016 makes the pundits, the consulting class and our Never Trump "allies" either look like arrogant idiots whose opinions should never be trusted again...or ambitious fools who were complicit in creating the ideal conditions for a monster like Trump to emerge...or both.  And since pundits, the consulting class and our Never Trump "allies" now dominate any media conversation about politics, that once again leaves it to dirty, disreputable outsiders like us to do the work of explaining why everything went to hell.  

To start with, President Barack Obama might as well have been built in a Centrist/Moderate/Both Siderist lab by the New York Times editorial board. He was everything the pundits and the consultant class said would be the "solve" for what was dividing America. 

This is from me 16 years ago, in 2010:

For his entire adult life, Barack Obama has succeeded by offering himself as the perfect midpoint between others. As a mathematical function, not a leader. As an averaging equation, not a true believer.

Since he showed up on the political radar, he has marketed himself relentlessly as

Half black and half white...
Half American urbanite, half world-citizen...
Half wonk, half preacher...
Half Harvard Yard, half Back o' the Yards...
Half red and half blue...

And this bone-deep reflex -- plus his formidable intellect and ability to rise to the rhetorical occasion -- would have prepared him perfectly for the Presidency...if this were 1960.

But it is not 1960 -- nor is he dealing with Harvard Conservatives pals or Springfield Republican pols -- and being a results-agnostic "process guy" when the process is utterly broken no longer works.

Instead, the ideologically-lockstepping Right led by Rupert Murdoch and the Koch brothers have found in Obama their perfect patsy: the Democrat who seems constitutionally incapable of counter-punching, who can only feel comfortable while suspended between two opposing positions and who will, therefore, find a compromise between opposites even when he has to invent wholly fictional opposing views to which he can cede half the playing field.

In order to avoid wasting his presidency, squandering the opportunity we have given him, and letting the country spiral into a permanent corporate feudal pest-hole, Barack Obama must do the hardest thing of all: he must exceed his design specifications. This is not unprecedented, but like Franklin Roosevelt the capitalist-turned-social-Democrat or Abraham Lincoln the compromiser-turned-Emancipator, Obama must let go of a central pillar of his identity and embrace the brutal fact that our modern house divided against itself cannot stand.

That we cannot endure permanently half-Fox and half-free.

That we will become all one thing, or all the other.

And that this is your fight, President Obama.

This burden has fallen to you: it cannot be shirked and cannot be delegated.

If you take up this challenge, millions of us will have your back, Mr. President.

But if you cannot summon the inner strength to evolve past your reflexive need to compromise with people who want to destroy you, then we are all well and truly fucked.

Because in 2008, Democrats took a chance on an outsider conjured out of their best hopes, but by 2010 it was clear to anyone with eyes to see that the Republican party and Conservative media were too far gone to be saved.  That by now there was too much power and too much profit trafficking in racism and conspiracy mongering and hatred for them to change.  That they viewed compromise, thoughtfulness, dignity and respect as weakness, and Obama as a patsy for continuing to offer calm, civility and concessions over and over again.  

That what the nation needed in that moment was a president who took to the bully pulpit every day to beat the shit out of GOP in the Truman style:

“I never did give them hell. I just told the truth, and they thought it was hell.” 

And to go after the working men and women who voted against their own interests in the same manner:

But that never happened.  And the reaction from Republicans to this decent, honorable, thoughtful man who begged them to work with him solve our common problems was an eight-year-long, racist primal scream and the to nominate and elect the personification of their most dangerously ignorant, racist fears. 

The King of the Birthers. 

Then they renominated him again in 2020.

Then, when he lost, they attempted a coup to overthrow the government, and spent the next four years screaming that the election had been stolen.

Then they renominated him yet again in 2024, re-elected him, and here we are.  And by now it should be plain enough for even the punditocracy to see that the problem was never Trump.  The problem has always been the bigots and imbeciles of the Republican base who manifested Trump, and the Conservative media which continues to belt-feed the most lurid red-meat lies to that base, which eagerly gobbles it up and asks for seconds.   

So, to quote another president from Illinois whose presidential library and museum are also here, 

The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country. Fellow-citizens, we can not escape history. We of this Congress and this Administration will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance or insignificance can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation. We say we are for the Union. The world will not forget that we say this. We know how to save the Union. The world knows we do know how to save it...

 And to repeat what I shamelessly stole from Lincoln 16 years ago and modified to fit our times:

That we cannot endure permanently half-Fox and half-free.

That we will become all one thing, or all the other.

 

Burn The Lifeboats

Professional Left Podcast Episode 1000: For Your Consideration

“It usually takes me more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech”  -- Mark Twain

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The Moderate Republican, Centrist and Independent's Lament

First they enacted Nixon's racist Southern Strategy
And I did not speak out
Because I'm not "political".

Then they welcomed White Conservative Fundamentalists into the party's inner circle
And I did not speak out
Because I'm not "political".

Then they embraced Hate Radio, Fox News and the whole Conservative propaganda grievance machine
And I did not speak out
Because I'm not "political".

Then they adopted the politics of Newt Gingrich, Tom DeLay, Karl Rove and Lee Atwater
And I did not speak out
Because I'm not "political".

Then they cheered on the War in Iraq and used it to demonize all opposition 
And I did not speak out
Because I'm not "political".

Then they put on stupid hats, called themselves a "Tea Party" and had an eight-year-long racist primal scream because Democrats elected a black guy
And I did not speak out
Because I'm not "political".

Then they put on different stupid hats, called themselves "MAGA," and nominated and elected the King of the Birthers.
And I did not speak out
Because I'm not "political".

Then they nominated the King of the Birthers again
And I did not speak out
Because I'm not "political".

Then they tried to overthrow the government when the King of the Birthers lost
And I did not speak out
Because I'm not "political".

Then they brought him back and elected him again
And I did not speak out
Because I'm not "political".

Then the King of the Birthers looted the treasury, put armed masked goons in the streets to intimidate and murder American citizens, launched a disastrous war for no explicable reason, torched our alliances, and generally fucked this country up almost beyond repair

But somehow none of that is my fault

Because I'm not "political".

Burn The Lifeboats