This is what Republicans wanted, and now they have achieved it.
For longer than I'd care to think about we have been warning anyone who would
listen that the Republican party was building a monster machine, and that if
this went on,
it would end in tears and terror.
The Conservative elite laughed those warnings off as Liberal hysteria and
crackpot alarmism until it was far too late. Now most of the
Conservative elite bends the knee to the demons they created, while a few
flail around trying to understand what just happened, and a fewer still seem
willing to entertain the possibility that the Republican base they helped to
create really are a mob or reprogrammable meatbags and completely lost to
reason.
The legacy media mocked and ignored those warnings as absurd, or childish or
otherwise unserious, or somehow too shrill and strident to be "tonally" acceptable. They
categorically refused to see the danger coming for them with knives out until
it was far too late. Now most of the legacy media bends the knee to the
monsters they enabled, while a few stumble about looking for an answer --
any answer -- that doesn't implicate them.
As for me, other than being unutterably sad at the outcome of the election and
fearful in a hundred new ways about the future, nothing has fundamentally
changed in my estimation of the forces at work in our country. The Republicans party remains a fascist killdozer being run by hobgoblins and grifters. The legacy media continues to be a near-comatose husk of its former self, being run by amoral moguls and fascist-friendly cooperators.
The dangers have escalated and are much more immediate, but other than
the fact that no one need bother with figleave hyphenates like "neo-" or "proto-" to describe what is very clearly our American fascist party, the job remains the same. Protect the weak and
the vulnerable who didn't ask for and do not deserve any of this, support each
other and take it one day at a time.
So whether you are a person of
faith or not, whether in victory or defeat, this by John Wesley remains
sound advice.
Olbermann [referring to the New York Times' one last, godawful, drive-by election headline]:
"Win or Lose, Trump Has Already Won.” How about "Win or Lose, Cancer Has Already Won” or maybe the New York Times -- and I assume they're just trolling us now or they have a bet -- a tontine -- as to who gets the Times when everybody else is no longer subscribed. The last subscriber gets the paper. I don't know...
Y'know, Keith, the next time you drop by for a quick read, leave a comment :-)
The third day of the near-disaster of the Apollo 13 moon shot.
Everyone involved has been doing everything they can to save the crew:
frantically trying to think and improvise their way through a minefield of
potentially lethal problems, using only the materials at hand on the damage spacecraft to stave off
catastrophe.
And everyone involved is exhausted.
The whole world is watching, worried, riveted, hungry for any scrap of
reliable information, not knowing how this will end.
Except this time roughly half of our own country is openly rooting for Lovell, Swigert
and Haise to crash and burn.
If you have been around these precincts for a very long time, you may remember
way, way back during the Before Time (y'know, the Good Olde Days for
which we are all supposed to be nostalgic and to which we are all supposed to
aspire) there existed a dyspeptic, Conservative prick named Robert
Novak.
Novakula to his critics, which were legion.
If you remember him at all, it was probably for the effortless way Frank Zappa
gutted him like a trout (or a Trout Mask Replica) in 1986 on a
now-mercifully-defunct teevee program called Crossfire.
Novak was a terrible, terrible person who, if he were alive today, would
undoubtedly be stinking up the noosphere with his own program on NewsMax or
Fox. He would also be one of the obligatory right wing asshole quota
hires at a major American newspaper. plus, of course, he'd have his own radio
show and podcast.
But he's dead, so we are spared all of that.
What is less well-remembered except by the last remaining member of the
Liberal Blogosphere Tontine is the time that James
Carville found Novak's "launch codes" as I put it at the time (way back in 2005), and induced him to say a swear on teevee and storm off the
show.
Well, did a loyal American cameraman perhaps land a priest-blessed silver
flickdart in the oily flanks of Human Gallstone, Bobby Novak?
Did some someone opening a window on the other side of the building set in
motion a never-to-be-reproduced, trick-pool-shot with a ray of sunlight
reflecting off of a pair of spectacles, caroming from a watch-face,
ricocheting from a hand-mirror and refracting from the newly squeegeed
framed Hockney print in the hall...only to land on the undead flesh of
he-who-was-cobble-together-from-Krauthammer-leftovers, searing the beast and
sending him into a smoking, insane rage.
Did someone slip a little Holy Water into his vinegar and Victory Gin
onscreen beverage?
No, but one thing is clear: the Number One Rightwing Golem “journalist” lost
it on-camera. Something got all burr-ish under the saddle of CIA-outing, GOP
ponyboy. The good people at Crooks and Liars had it up in seconds, and it
seems to make no sense at all.
He and James Carville are chatting, and suddenly he shouts “Bullshit”, gets
up and stomps away.
God have mercy on Bob Novak’s dog tonight.
The issue was that Novak acted as bagman for the Bush administration's plot to
out an active, undercover CIA agent to punish her husband for proving that
Bush was lying his ass off about the predicate for his Iraq war. (Fun
fact: all the sleazy collusion and sometimes outright treasonous
behavior by administration officials and the Conservative media the took place
during what the Never Trumpers now consider to be the good old days.)
Anyhoo, as I recall, James Carville telescoped his punch just enough to let
Novak know that he was about to be outed on live national television, and
Novak proceeded to lose his shit:
They teach you that on day one at Conservative media sleepaway camp:
when you find yourself well and truly cornered, play the aggrieved martyr by
pitching a big, performative tantrum and stomping out.
Which brings us, perforce, to the case of Hugh Hewitt, the cyborg sent from
the future to destroy America. Since Hewitt does not experience human
emotions, when it came time for him to reserve a high place for himself in any
future Trumpian Republican party by playing the martyr, staging a hissy and
stomping out, it was weird and awkward. Like something a Roomba with
rudimentary AI features might have practiced in front of a mirror several
times the night before.
Hugh Hewitt resigns from Washington Post after storming out of live
interview
Hewitt abruptly left a live broadcast of the Post’s show “First Look,”
leaving the host and his fellow guest stunned.
Conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt resigned Friday from his columnist
position at The Washington Post, he confirmed to Fox News, after walking
out on a live interview on the paper’s video platform — the latest blow to
the Post after facing widespread blowback over halting presidential
endorsements.
Hewitt stormed out during a live broadcast of the Post’s show “First
Look” during a discussion Friday morning about how former President Donald
Trump is laying the groundwork to potentially contest the election,
leaving host Jonathan Capehart and fellow guest Ruth Marcus stunned.
“We are newspeople, even though we have opinions, and we have to report
the whole story if we bring up part of the story,” Hewitt said during a
heated exchange over a GOP Pennsylvania voting lawsuit he reminded viewers
“was successful.”
“I don’t appreciate being lectured about reporting when, Hugh, many times
you come here saying lots of things that aren’t based in fact,” Capehart
replied.
“I won’t come back, Jonathan, I’m done,” Hewitt shot back, removing his
ear piece and walking off screen. “This is the most unfair election ad I
have ever been a part of.”...
The only part of this with which I disagree is the bit about this
being "the latest blow to the Post after facing widespread blowback..." blah blah blah. Au contraire! To misquote the Scottish play,
nothing in Hewitt's tenure at the Post became him like the leaving it.
The only part of this I regret is that conditions were such that Hewitt could
not execute a Full Steve Schmidt: doing the martyr/tantrum thing and
then storming off his own podcast.
Steve Schmidt Storms Off Own Podcast When Asked About Advising Howard
Schultz
“This is bullsh*t,” Schmidt exclaims. “I’m not doing this.”...
The Schmidt case also provides us with an excellent example of how the Media Insider Club works. Membership in the Club virtually guaranteed that no matter how hard a member of the Club schmidts the bed, sooner or later a place will be found for them back in the opinion-havers guild
As you know, the Friday before election day is the time when fair weather
friends, sunshine patriots and, as of late, many of our Never Trump "allies",
gather together to bitch and moan that Democrats have not adequately stepped
up to the job of reversing the fortunes of the American fascist party --
a fascist party which those same fair weather friends, sunshine patriots
and,Never Trump "allies" all had a hand in creating.
But that last little fact is somehow never mentioned in their solemn, sour
conclaves. Instead we are treated to yet another airing of their
grievances against the Democrats because we failed to do whatever the whatsit
these "Centrist", "Center/Right"
dispossessed recently-former Republic aristocrats
feel should have been our Job #1.
The proper attitude of these fuckers should, of course, be apologizing without
ceasing and begging Democrats for forgiveness for the decades they spent
helping to build the doomsday machine that is bearing down on us all, then
turning their unearned positions in the media over to people who weren't wrong
about the Right all along, then asking what more they can do to help us win.
Instead we get the Bulwark's Beg to Differ podcast, this week featuring Reagan era fossil and Disparaging Aunt Who Thinks You Would Have Been Better
Off Marrying That Rich Accountant, Linda Chavez saying shit like this:
Chavez: I... I just wanted to say something that, um, hasn't been,
uh, and that is, uh, Kamala Harris and the transsexual issue.
Here we go. Also "Kamala Harris and the Transsexual Issue" is definitely the name of my garage band if I ever get around to forming a garage band. .
Chavez: And I think that the fact that those commercials --
those, uh, Trump commercials --run every time there's a sporting event... I
mean they're clearly aimed at male voters, um, who I think are probably more
uncomfortable on that issue and she needed a...
Wait for it...
Wait for it...
Chavez: Sister Soulja moment.
And there it is.
Chavez:And she she hasn't given herself that. She might have been
able... I don't think she could do it at this point on that issue, uh ,
y'know she's basically... the campaign... not... she has has more or less
tried to diminish this issue
and clearly it it's not a huge issue in terms of the number of people it
affected, uh, but, y'know, some of us have been warning that this was an issue
culturally that doesn't sit well with the American people.
So, find a trans person. Punch them in the face on camera.
And bingo bongo, you've won over drooling incels! Yay!
Except drooling incels also hate women generally, and black people, so there's
that.
Remember, kids, to please Conservative pundits, Dems must
always hunt up some symbolic hippie to punch to prove to Conservative pundits that they love Murrica or whatever.
I can easily image this same group of Senior Center cafeteria opinion havers
having exactly this same gripe session in 2004, after Dubya won re-election of
the strength of Karl Rove and Matthew Dowd putting gay-bashing referenda on
the ballot in swing states to make sure the Conservative Evangelicals came out
on force, advising Democrats that if they wanted to get right with "the
American people", they would have to have a Sister Soulja moment with Teh
Gays.
BTW, the momentary silence you hear at the end of Ms. Chavez' remarks is Tim Miller not
saying a damn thing.
Instead, Bill Galston, another relic from the Land That Time Forgot, piped in with this:
Galston: First of all I agree with what Linda just said
emphatically...
What these goofs actually know about "the American people" could fit in a
gnat's fanny pack,
So, once again, happy belated “Bellyaching Because Democrats Aren’t Doing It
Right” Day to all who celebrate
