Not exactly Dale Carnegie.
Burn The Lifeboats
Friday, July 18, 2025
They Say Imitation Is The Sincerest Form Of...Something
This is my artwork from 2014. I've used it many times since.
And this is a metaphor of mine from 2022, or possibly earlier. I've used it many times since.
For decades, while the establishment media masturbated itself blind in their Platonic Cave, the GOP has been worked diligently to create an unstoppable Gingrich/Limbaugh political Doomsday Machine.
A Doomsday Machine that could not be reasoned with or bargained with.
A Doomsday Machine with no "off" switch.
And they succeeded.
This is the artwork The Atlantic put together for Peter Wehner's article:
This is the headline:
Trump Discovers MAGA Has No ‘Off’ Switch
This is his conclusion:
Having created that movement, Trump is discovering there’s no “off” switch.
This all may or may not have been a coincidence. Probably was. However, given how thoroughly Never Trumpers have ransacked longstanding Liberal critiques of the Republican party while never acknowledging that we exist at all outside of a still-punchable straw-men, date back to way before Trump, it wouldn't surprise me.
Whatever the facts may be, it does afford me the opportunity to, once again, repeat this for the benefit of sloooow Never Trumpers who, for some reason, now have all the microphones.
You are the ones who created this doomsday machine.
You are the ones who made sure it had no "off" switch.
You are the ones who did this because you were sure that you could control it
You are the ones who profit hugely from it.
And when Trump snatched it out of your hands by doing nothing more than speaking to the base in the language of rage, racism and paranoia you taught them, only then did you jump up and demand to know where all these fascist MAGA zombies had suddenly come from.
Burn The Lifeboats
Thursday, July 17, 2025
Professional Left Podcast Episode 918: Welcome To Stupid Watergate Summer
"By disgracing and degrading the presidency of the United States, by fleeing the White House like a diseased cur, Richard Nixon broke the heart of the American Dream." -- Hunter S. Thompson
The Professional Left Podcast with Driftglass and Blue Gal
Ep 918: Welcome To Stupid Watergate Summer
We're mad as hell, and we're not going to take it anymore. After 15 years of ringing alarm bells about the Republican party's dangers to our democracy, we find ourselves in the midst of what we're calling "Stupid Watergate Summer" – and it's cooking now.
This week, we break down the eerie parallels between Nixon's original Watergate scandal and Trump's current pedophile coverup crisis. From mysteriously missing minutes in crucial evidence (sound familiar?) to panicked firings of key Justice Department officials, we're watching history rhyme in the most disturbing ways possible.
We explore how Trump's load-bearing lie – his promise to expose the "global pedophile ring" – is finally cracking under the weight of his own contradictions. When your entire political movement is built on fighting satanic pedophiles, what happens when you start covering for them instead?
Plus, we discuss the unprecedented blowback from Trump's own MAGA base, Elon Musk's social media meltdown over the Epstein files, and why this scandal has the potential to fracture the cult of personality that is modern Republicanism.
We also cover the week's news: hundreds of lawyers banding together against Emil Bove's judicial nomination, Trump's rambling speech about his uncle and the Unabomber, and Josh Hawley's pathetic attempt to roll back Medicaid cuts he just voted for.
Because when fascists are destroying democracy, the answer to every question is a noun, a verb, and Donald Trump's coverup of the Epstein Files.
Not safe for work. Recorded live from the Cornfield Resistance.
Stay in Touch!
- Email: proleftpodcast@gmail.com
- Website: proleftpod.com
- Support via Patreon: patreon.com/proleftpod
- Mail: The Professional Left, PO Box 9133, Springfield, Illinois, 62791
The Professional Left is brought to you by our wholly imaginary
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Stupid Watergate
So far, Stupid Watergate is checking every box. Crimes, cash and coverups.
In both scandals, a hugely incriminating gap in a critical tape has been found that just happens to be right where the smoking gun would have been.
In both scandals, we find shoe leather hustle by honest journalists on a story that none of the elite members of the legacy media wanted to touch. Honest reporting that is not only moving the story forward, but also shaming the "Let's move on to something else" legacy media into getting off their fat asses and start asking questions. of their own.
From Wired magazine:
The FBI's Jeffrey Epstein Prison Video Had Nearly 3 Minutes Cut Out
Metadata from the “raw” Epstein prison video shows approximately 2 minutes and 53 seconds were removed from one of two stitched-together clips. The cut starts right at the “missing minute.”
In both scandals, there are ominous and obviously panicked firings of key players who threaten to bring the scandal inside the White House.
From emptywheel:
Pam Bondi Fired the Avenger of Sex Trafficking Victims on Donald Trump’s Personal Authority
I’ve often said that, this time, Donald Trump has chosen poorly of which people to make political martyrs.
Less than eight hours after proclaiming that the Jeffrey Epstein scandal was just some “new SCAM” perpetrated by Democrats, about four days after he first attempted to float the wildly illogical claim that the Epstein “Files [were] written by Obama, Crooked Hillary, Comey, Brennan, and the Losers and Criminals of the Biden Administration,” DOJ fired Jim Comey’s daughter, Maurene.
According to the NYT, the letter terminating Ms. Comey cited Article II authority.
Ms. Comey was informed of her firing in a letter that cited Article II of the Constitution, which describes the powers of the president, according to two of the people.
From 1973, the Saturday Night Massacre:
The obvious difference this time is that Nixon's Attorney General, Eliot Richardson, was fired because he took a principled stand against what Nixon was trying to do, whereas Trump's Attorney General is an unprincipled whore who would do any monstrous thing Trump told her to do.
On the other hand, Nixon's previous Attorney General, John Mitchell, was corrupt as fuck and was convicted of several Watergate-related crimes.
Like OG Watergate, Stupid Watergate implicates members of Trump's cabinet and his inner circle of creepy, fascist "advisors".
And, like OG Watergate, the central character in Stupid Watergate is a bitter, paranoid, lying crook who is obviously guilty as hell, who is unraveling by the day, who is shedding supporters like a pug sheds fur, who is lashing out in all directions, and who oscillates wildly between pleading and demanding that everyone shut the fuck up and move on.
This may be where Stupid Watergate veers off the OG Watergate track, but if not, then expect Trump to offer to reveal the TRUTH about the Epstein files, "warts and all", but only via an "investigation" he personally controls, which will produce a PERFECT "report" that he will personally edit. Should this be the case, expect "The Final Word On The Obama Biden Crooked Hillary Epstein Hoax SCAM" to be bound in cheap, fake leather and offered on Trump's merch site alongside the Trump Bible and Trump Shitcoins and all the rest of the landfill detritus of this Monster from the Republican Id.
If you can think of any other parallels between OG Watergate and Stupid Watergate, leave them in the comments.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Addenda: As Lindsay Beyerstein points out, what makes Stupid Watergate extra potent is the nature of the scandal at the heart of it:
We are living through a slow-burn satanic panic where a large percentage of evangelicals believe that child traffickers run the United States of America.
“This is a very specific complaint that is deeply felt and very dark that is in MAGA. If you spend much time in MAGA circles you will encounter a lot of people it’s not just that they think the elites are out to get them. They think the elites are running a global pedophile ring, that America is run by pedophiles. Now, the extreme version of that is the QAnon but the Epstein controversy is part and parcel of this," [David] French explains.
The whole reason these people supported Donald Trump in the first place was because he promised to liberate America from the Satanic pedophiles and if he won't do that, he's not the Chosen One after all.
No Half Measures
Tuesday, July 15, 2025
Professional Left Podcast Episode 917: Blame Obama Week? Again?
"Confidence men have a simple rule: never drop the con - even if you're exposed. For Donald Trump, that's a way of life." -- Neera Tanden
The Professional Left Podcast with Driftglass and Blue Gal
Ep 917: Blame Obama Week? Again?
This week we're celebrating Blue Gal's birthday while diving deep into Trump's latest meltdown over the Epstein files. We break down how the former reality TV star is now turning his trademark attack style on his own MAGA base as they demand answers about his promised disclosures that never materialized.
Remember: when MAGA tries to change the subject, there's only one question that matters - what about Trump covering up the Epstein files?
This podcast is not safe for work and is recorded live from the Cornfield Resistance.
LINK to last Saturday's Hal Sparks Live Show:
Stay in Touch!
- Email: proleftpodcast@gmail.com
- Website: proleftpod.com
- Support via Patreon: patreon.com/proleftpod
- Mail: The Professional Left, PO Box 9133, Springfield, Illinois, 62791
The Professional Left is brought to you by our wholly imaginary
"sponsors" and real listeners like you!
Superman So Woke
If you ever listened to rebroadcasts of The Adventures of Superman radio serial you know that Supe was woke AF from the beginning.
I am heavily excerpting this directly from James Lantz's review/summary of "George Latimer, Crooked Political Boss" from the Superman home page here.
The episodes were originally broadcast between September 03, 1946 and September 25, 1946, so if you're concerned about having a 79-year-old radio drama spoiled, you should stop reading right now.
Joe Martin, brother of the Daily Planet copy boy Beany and war hero of the Okinawa Invasion, and his Jewish friend Sam Robbins are in the state capitol speaking with thousands of G.I.s against the policies of Governor Frank C. Wheeler, who has been using prejudiced hiring methods. Most veterans have not gotten work because of their race and/or religion. Many of these jobs were promised to soldiers returning from the war. Both Joe and Sam believe that everyone should have an equal right to have employment. However, they want to protest in a different way. Joe wants to storm the capitol building, but Sam believes a more peaceful solution will work better. However, the men with whom they are talking are impatient and want a quick resolution to this problem.
Governor Wheeler is in a panic. George Latimer, corrupt man that is really controlling the political figure, is trying to calm him down. The state police have been dispatched to protect the area. Latimer has a plan that will make it look like Sam Robbins will do away with Joe Martin. All Wheeler has to do is speak to the G.I.s. He does so by saying he wants to rid the USA of foreigners that can undermine the government for true Americans. His words anger the war veterans, and in a panic, Wheeler orders the state police to fire their tommy guns. Chaos has now rocked the state capitol.
Beany has just received news that his brother had been shot while he and the other G.I.s were demonstrating at the state capitol. Perry White and Clark Kent promise to do everything they can to help Joe. Clark goes to the hospital and speaks with Sam Robbins. He doesn't know how Joe became the only one that could have been shot if tommy guns were used. Clark then investigates further by going to the state police department. Sergeant Adams, a ballistics expert that was at the G.I. protest, had told Governor Wheeler that he and his men didn't want to fire on any soldiers because many were in the war themselves. George Latimer convinced them to shoot, but the weapons were normally issued arms. Only one thing could clear the officers at the capitol building: the type of bullet that hit Joe Martin....
Joe Martin has just come out of his coma and is asking for Sam. Joe is in a critical state. Only seeing Sam could help Joe. This means Superman may have to break the law to save the lives of two human beings...
Superman has promised the police that he'll bring Sam back to prison after he helps Joe. Sam has just visited and spoke with his friend. Joe Martin, thanks to Sam Robbins and Superman, is now on the slow road to recovery...
Governor Wheeler and George Latimer are in the former's office. A message about Sam's visit and Joe's recovery has gotten to Latimer. Now, the corrupt political leader must hatch another sinister plot that could mean trouble for Superman and his friends.
Lippy Williams, reporter for the Daily Clarion, is meeting George Latimer in Governor Wheeler's office. Latimer wants to spread propaganda against Sam Robbins, Jews, Catholics, African Americans and other races and religions in order to give his friends state jobs, and he doesn't care who gets hurt in the process.
An article in the Clarion claims that the shooting of Joe Martin was a foreign plot. While Clark Kent follows a lead given to him by the rival newspaper, Some of the G.I.s at the American Legion that were at the state capitol are taking it upon themselves to attempt to get Sam Robbins out of prison. This makes George Latimer happy. Everything seems to be going better than he had planned. The veterans may very well get themselves into some really big trouble...
The unruly group of masked vigilantes led by a man named Dean Carter, an ally of George Latimer, has just taken Sam into the woods. In the meantime, Clark Kent has learned of George Latimer's "suggestion" to move Sam Robbins upstate. The irate Kent tells Governor Wheeler to pray that nothing happens to Robbins. Superman then flies to Grant City unaware of the fact that a bound Sam is being beaten by a mob of hate-filled men. Will the Man of Steel learn of young Robbins' peril?
One member of the mob named Doc has had a change of heart. He helps Sam escape the hate mongers. They flee for their lives in the dark woods. Meanwhile, Clark Kent is worried. It's been three hours since the patrol car carrying Sam left Metropolis, and it hasn't reported in anywhere. As Superman, he flies on a frantic search for Sam, who is running through the forest with Doc's aid. A war injury has prevented Sam from moving without help. They make it to an old barn. However, the masked vigilantes are closing in and shooting, and thanks to some burning hay, the structure Doc and Sam are inside is starting to catch on fire.
Superman has just seen the barn fire. He shields Sam and Doc just as the roof collapses. Taking Dean Carter's mob of bigots to the state policemen he had untied, the Man of Steel is now prepared to take Doc and Sam to Metropolis. Later, in Perry White's office, Clark Kent tells the chief of recent events and new information. The G.I.s with Joe Martin and Sam Robbins swear that the latter didn't have a gun. Plus, the direction of the bullet that hit Joe indicates that it was shot from the steps of the state capitol building...
Superman is meeting with Inspector Henderson later that night. The Man of Steel carries him and lands on the balcony of Latimer's apartment home. Henderson also has a small record player and a record. Superman takes both and prepares to get a confession from George Latimer. The voice of Governor Wheeler is heard in the hate mongering political boss' bedroom. Latimer is crazed with fear. Taking a revolver, he fires at the shadowed figure of Superman. As the Governor Wheeler's voice continues, Latimer confesses to all of his crimes and is taken to prison. As a result of Latimer's arrest, Governor Wheeler resigns his post in the state government. Superman has once again fought injustice...
It is late at night in the home of Clark Kent. Bruce Wayne, who is Batman, has just called the reporter for help. At the Wayne home, Bruce tells Clark how his friend John Grayson and his wife were killed during an acrobatic act that they had performed five years ago in the circus. John's last words were for Bruce to take care of his son Dick, who we all know is Robin the Boy Wonder. John Grayson's diary and conversations Dick had overheard say that a man named George Larson had blackmailed the Graysons because Mrs. Grayson was French and had family that was part of the underground during the war. When the Graysons could no longer pay Larson, they threatened to go to the district attorney. Larson had later tampered with the high wire used in the Graysons' performance.
Trivia: Charles Boulty, Chairman of the American Veterans Committee, gives the series a commendation for fighting against prejudice before the beginning of chapter eleven.
Truth, Justice And The American Way
The Fuhrer Next Time
From me,
19 years ago:
In five years, having voted for Bush will have become the parachute pants of this decade.It will become the “Oh my GOD. What the fuck was I thinking?” shameful secret people will occasionally and elliptically allude to by piping up with, “well, he did good after 9/11” as schoolchildren are taught what a disaster on every front and by every measure he was, and as adults who now have to pay and pay dearly for the myriad lies and crimes and follies of George W. Bush recount his Top 100 Fuckups and bitterly laugh and laugh and laugh.So that’s where we are now.
I was directionally correct, but after watching Republicans and the legacy
media haul the history of the Bush administration down the the River Lethe,
weigh it down with stones, sew it into a bag and toss it in, I realized that,
as cynical as I was, I underestimated both the sheer moral
hollowness of Republican voters and how complicit the legacy media was willing
to be in bulldozing the Bush administration down the memory hole.
I recalibrated my estimation of how much trouble we were in downward, and have
not been off the mark since.
Because there were no shameful admissions. No rueful laughter at their
toxic folly. Because they had already learned the most important aspect
of Conservatism: under no circumstances will Conservatives ever be
required to admit they were wrong or had made a mistake. Everything will
always be either someone else's fault, or everything they did was the result
of a painful Hobbesian choice they were forced to make because, as the legacy
media and Conservative media have both drilled into them for decades,
Democrats are always, always, always as bad or worse than Republicans.
So, by 2008, Republican scum had already begun to tart themselves up as
"independents."
By 2009, David Fucking Brooks was already legitimizing these
Republicans-in-Independent-camo in the pages of the New York Times.
By 2010, they had tromped through the Bush-Off Machine and fully morphed into
the Fake Tea Party, bellowing about deficits, taxes, Death Panels, Birth
Certificates and the Scary Radical Negro president.
But... but... however hard they tried to scrub it off, these assholes who had
had been the braying, strutting cheerleaders of everything Dubya had done were
desperate to get back to the awesome "when none can call our power to account"
aspect of being a Conservative --
Out, damned spot! out, I say!--One: two: why, then, 'tis time to do't.--Hell is murky!--Fie, my lord, fie! a soldier, and afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account?--Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him.
-- but, like Lady MacBeth, they could never quite cleanse
themselves of that big, bloody Bush administration stain.
And why? Because the leaders of their own party refused to do the one
thing the base wanted above all else: make George W. Bush the villain.
Sacrifice him to exonerate them. Wicker Man his ass. Instead,
those eight years of ruin and failure were just, sorta left there. A
rotting carcass in the middle of the room, lightly covered with a sheet, but
everyone still had to step around it to get where they were goin, and the
smell still hung in the air.
And then along came Trump, who told the base exactly what they wanted to
hear. From Politico, February 14, 2016:
Trump Goes Code Pink on George W. Bush
It was weird that an angry Code Pink-style protester interrupted last night’s Republican presidential debate with a barrage of familiar Democratic talking points about George W. Bush—that he lied the country into a disastrous war in Iraq, failed to prevent the September 11 attacks, and even whiffed on an opportunity to kill Osama bin Laden. It was especially weird that the protestor was one Donald J. Trump, who happens to be the front-runner for the Republican nomination.
Trump didn’t just call the Iraq war a mistake. He called it “a big fat mistake.” And he didn't call it an inadvertent mistake because of faulty intelligence. “They lied!” he thundered. “They said there were weapons of mass destruction … and they knew there were none.” ...
Then Trump turned and pointed the finger directly at "Jeb!"
[Trump] spent much of the night mocking George’s brother Jeb as a weak, incompetent, lying loser.
And it is a measure of how completely clueless about the state of the
Republican base the legacy media, Republican elites and Conservative pundits
all were that they rose almost as one, in surprise and bemusement and
pearl-clutching umbrage, to begin drafting Trump's political obituary for
doing such a thing.
But this was the sort of thing the base of the Republican base had been dying
for. Not shamefaced deflection and denial, but full-throated,
unequivocal absolution. It wasn't their fault! They had been
deceived! Tricked! Hoodwinked! Cheated!
Bamboozled!
This was what Trump offered. Reassurance. Validation.
Remember, the Republican party spent decades and billions of dollars carefully
cultivating a base of xenophobes, homophobes, misogynists, white nationalists,
gun nuts, Conservative Christian theocrats, bigots and imbeciles. Anyone
who listened to Hate Radio or watched Fox News for five minutes could see
it. And yet, to make itself acceptable a legacy media which the base
despised, Conservative pundits consistently pretended that base did not
exist. Instead, pundits pretended that the base was made up entirely of
thoughtful, yeoman farmers and shopkeepers who lived in a place called Real
America, and spent their days quoting Edmund Burke and Milton Friedman back
and forth to each other over the back yard fence.
To win elections, party leaders needed a base that was stupid enough and
paranoid enough and rage-drunk enough to consistently vote against their own
interests because Democrats were Murrica-hatin', terrorist-luvin',
baby-killin' commies. But at the same time they also
needed that base to shut the fuck up about how stupid and paranoid and
rage-drunk they were when the normies were paying attention.
Bill Buckley in the streets, George Wallace between the sheets.
And then along came Trump who told them, fuck all that. Fuck the elites
who tell you to be ashamed. Fuck the Fake News that tells you things you
don't want to hear. Be proud of your bigotry. Lean in to your
misogyny. Revel in your cruelty. Wipe your asses with the
Constitution and laugh when Liberal whine about it!
Trump's 2016 appeal began with telling the base to celebrate everything the
party elites told them to be ashamed of, and absolving the GOP base of all the
heinous shit they had said and done that had blown up in their faces during
the Dubya years.
So whether Trump is wheeled out of office in January, 2029, drooling and
gibbering, or he goes out toes-up on a gurney before then, the MAGA mob isn't
going anywhere. And because the rule is that the MAGA mob must never,
ever be required to admit they were wrong or had made a mistake, you can bet
your last $10 egg that the next Republican demagogue to win the MAGA mob will
do it by finding a way to absolve them of all the heinous shit they are saying
and doing now, that will have blown up in their faces by the then.
No Half Measures
In Case You Were Wondering What Bolshi Freedom Troll Glenn Greenwald Is Up To These Days
The biggest scandal of the last 5 years isn't that corporate media united to lie to the public about Biden's cognitive decline, though that is a gigantic scandal.
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) July 14, 2025
It's that unelected people exploited it to run the country in secret in Biden's name.https://t.co/mWy9hSVEtL
He is blowing on the dying embers of his years as Tucker Carlson's wacky "liberal" sidekick in the hopes of keeping his rep as a minor MAGA celebrity alive.
The question of why the New York Fucking Times is dignifying the Trump autopen gaslighting is a separate issue that might best be answered by noting the ridiculously over-the-top barrage of "Biden is old" stories that defined their coverage of the 2024 election, and the ridiculously over-the-top barrage of "Hillary's emails" stories that defined their coverage of the 2016 election.
I Am The Liberal Media
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