Kind of a weird argument to make for a person who regularly performs as Tucker Carlson's affirming sidekick. It's ok to agree with Carlson on stuff, but not Kristol or Boot? https://t.co/OoYoYElPbw
Except, perhaps, to note that all of these people operate from a position of aloof and unearned privilege, and none of them really give a shit about the real, day-to-day hopes and fears of anyone I know.
Also (and for the record) it is quite possible that I may be the only blogger in Christendom on record as advocating that Kristol and Boot and Carlson and Greenwald should all be welded into an oil drum and fired into space.
Still in GuanTwitterMo Bay for using a word and a context which various Blue Check conservatives have used literally dozens of times with no repercussions, including one Blue Check conservative --
Sid Blumenthal left the clamps on the gimp all night, and now the G-File is on the Internet https://t.co/VungvM9Tzc
CHUCK TODD: That progressive-versus-centrist rift could play a big role in 2020. My guests this morning, New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio and the head of the Democratic National Committee, Tom Perez. Joining me for insight and analysis are Amy Walter, national editor of The Cook Political Report; Eddie Glaude, Jr., of Princeton University; Eliana Johnson, national political reporter for Politico; and Jonah Goldberg, senior editor at National Review. Welcome to Sunday. It's Meet the Press.
So yeah, I'm taking this personally.
OTOH, Twitter is really just another corporate media platform and as such is free operate as arbitrarily and capriciously as the whims of its owners dictate.
And to make things even more confusing, since Jonah Goldberg now occasionally says true things about Donald Trump, according to the most recent directive from Liberal High Command entitled "Never Trumpers Are Now Our Allies And Friends So Quit Asking Embarrassing Questions About What They Were Doing Before 2016" apparently Never Trumpers are now our allies and friends and I am supposed to stop asking embarrassing questions about their past.
Of course I have no intention of abiding by any directives from Liberal High Command until they put me on the payroll and/or explain to me (using very little words) the Big Strategy behind what appears to be a transparently stupid idea. Until then, expect me to be in and out of the Hashtag Hoosegow because...
In fact, for decades there have been Condition Red alarm bells being rung by the Left all across this country as loud as we could manage. It's just that, until the Rise of Trump, is was so much more profitable for the fascist Right and their enablers in the Both Sides Do It media to dismiss America's political first responders as America-hating, terrorist-loving Libtards and go right on refining the Republican monster machine.
Until, inevitably, a monster like Trump -- who is literally nothing more or less than the physical manifestation of rage and racism and paranoia and arrogant stupidity of the Republican Party base -- came shambling off the assembly line.
And now that the wingnut apocalypse that we on the Left have been warning about for decades has come to pass, who do I see on my teevee reveling in the distress of the GOP zombies?
Rick Wilson: 'Ann Coulter's Tears Taste Delicious'
In this blistering segment on AM Joy, Trump supporters are described as "zombies" and Rick Wilson enjoys Ann Coulter's meltdown about the wall
One of the very same Republican political mercenaries who spent their professional lives weaponized the Republican zombie plague to begin with.
Because let's face it. Building a political party out of bigots and imbeciles stupid enough and fanatical enough to fling themselves into a live volcano if Sean Hannity tells them to and blame the Libtards with their dying breath has been the life's work of Republican mercenaries like Rick Wilson.
And now that they have finally created the political party of their dreams, no matter how much smoke and mirrors they deploy or how much tap-dancing they do or how many credulous Liberals foolishly lend them credibility, at the end of the day, for Republican mercenaries like Rick Wilson, their only only real regret is that the wrong Republican demagogue got hold of the wingnut launch codes.
Excited to announce the launch of my new podcast, Newt's World! Each week, we'll cover topics from the past, present, and future to understand where we’ve been and where we're going. Listen & subscribe here: https://t.co/BvRCHC8MHc@WestwoodOnepic.twitter.com/7vwczr5KwU
Golly, I wonder what "Newt's World!" will be like.
Oh, wait. Never mind. I don't wonder at all. From The New York Times nearly 30 years ago:
The Politics of Slash and Burn
'Sick.'' ''Traitors.'' ''Bizarre.'' ''Self-serving.'' ''Shallow.'' ''Corrupt.'' ''Pathetic.'' ''Shame.'' The group that urged political candidates to use these epithets has since regretted suggesting the word ''traitors,'' in response to inquiries from the press. But the others were allowed to stand; they appear in a glossary that a conservative Republican group recently mailed to Republican state legislative candidates. The group is Gopac, the G.O.P. Political Action Committee. Its general chairman is Representative Newt Gingrich. With the pamphlet, ''Language: A Key Mechanism of Control,'' comes a letter from Mr. Gingrich himself. Its message to candidates: Step up invective. Use words like these to describe opponents. These words work. Mr. Gingrich's injunction represents the worst of American political discourse, which reached a low during the dispiriting Presidential campaign of 1988. Then, more than ever before, negative argument displaced reasoned discussion about how a nation might best be governed. The sound bite reigned. Attack commercials flourished. The signs this year aren't any better. Evidence that negative campaigning can come back to sink the sender has had little impact. The races for governor in California and Texas have already seen the same slash and burn. No doubt the proceedings will grow more rabid still as November nears. Negative discourse serves democracy poorly. The temptation to avoid serious debate is already great. It increases as the stakes soar and slander becomes a rewarding, easy option. The issues of the day go untended. The whole affair takes on the character of the gladiator's art. The Gopac glossary may herald a descent into even lower levels of discourse. It comes blessed by a politician of some influence - the Republican whip in the House - and it is intended for candidates on the state level, many of them presumably running for the first time. Even though Mr. Gingrich himself may not have seen the list before it was mailed, this is a disturbing document. The nakedness of the Gopac offering also makes it useful. There must be limits to the negative politics that voters will bear; the bald appeal to invective will certainly probe those limits. For now, it should be said that some adjectives in the glossary aptly describe the glossary itself: shallow, sensationalist and, yes, shame(ful).
The Republican Party has been fully the Party of Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh for more than a quarter of a century. And everyone who worked to advance the interests of the Republican Party during that time and turn it into a monster factory capable of producing Donald Trump is complicit.
A number of scholars have credited Gingrich with playing a key role in undermining democratic norms in the United States, and hastening political polarization and partisan prejudice. According to Harvard University political scientists Daniel Ziblatt and Steven Levitsky, Gingrich's speakership had a profound and lasting impact on American politics and health of American democracy. They argue that Gingrich instilled a "combative" approach in the Republican Party, where hateful language and hyper-partisanship became commonplace, and where democratic norms were abandoned. Gingrich frequently questioned the patriotism of Democrats, called them corrupt, compared them to fascists, and accused them of wanting to destroy the United States. Gingrich furthermore oversaw several major government shutdowns, as well as impeached President Clinton in a partisan fashion.
University of Maryland political scientist Lilliana Mason uses Gingrich's instructions to Republicans to use words such as “betray, bizarre, decay, destroy, devour, greed, lie, pathetic, radical, selfish, shame, sick, steal, and traitors” about Democrats as an example of a breach in social norms and exacerbation of partisan prejudice...
And just in case you were wondering, yes, bomb-throwing racist thuggery --
After leaving Congress in 1999, Gingrich started a number of for-profit companies: Between 2001 and 2010, the companies he and his wife owned in full or part had revenues of almost $100 million. Currently, Gingrich serves as an advisor to the Canadian mining company Barrick Gold.
According to financial disclosure forms released in July 2011, Gingrich and his wife had a net worth of at least $6.7 million in 2010, compared to a maximum net worth of $2.4 million in 2006. Most of the increase in his net worth was because of payments to him from his for-profit companies.
“Every true hustler knows that you cannot hustle forever. You will go to jail eventually."
-- The Notorious B.I.G.
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As some of you might remember, the last time I got tossed into the Hashtag Hoosegow is was for referring to Bill Maher as a "whore" on Twitter.
That was all it took.
So, on the theory that every time God locks a Twitter account She opens a new tab on Windows, I chose to use my time in solitary to have some fun in the prison library and research whether or not Bill Maher himself had ever used suchlike language on Twitter.
The results did not surprise me. But Bill Maher is a Blue Check and I'm a nobody that's just how Twitter rolls.
And now, dear readers, I have once again I have transgressed the unwritten rules of decorum and used an Outlaw Word on the Twitter and am now officially a marked man.
A two-time loser.
A Twecidivist .
And what got me kicked out this time?
Using the word "Gimp" specifically in reference to Lindsey Graham and a very, very famous scene from the movie Pulp Fiction.
And that, boys and girls was literally all it took to get me locked out of Twitter. Again.
And so, with all the slow time I now have on my hands to a contemplate my fate as I sit here in my cell, I thought perhaps we might share a Teachable Moment and have a little fun by once again raiding the prison library to see if there are perhaps other people -- much more respectable and prominent persons -- who might also have used that word on Twitter.
And with just a few minutes at the microfiche machine, do you know who I found out just fucking loves that word?
Everybody's favorite Never Trumper Rick Wilson.
And while I shan't bore you by using a 20 lb. sledgehammer to overkill the matter, perhaps you can indulge me the use of a 16 oz. ball-peen hammer to make the point, beginning with Mr. Wilson's vivid description of President Barack Obama from 2013:
Putin: "My working and personal relationship with President Obama is marked by growing trust. Also, he looks hot in the gimp suit."
It's called "making a case" and Trump's slack-wit strip-mall lawyers, pwn duh libz media gimps, sideshow freak consultants, White House fluffers, and delusional fans better hope for a jury of oxy-addled human-possum hybrids who watch 80 hours of Fox a week when Mueller is done. https://t.co/Vb5bVNfHEP
NATO is a fundamental, essential, proven pillar of our national security architecture. Why is anyone shocked Putin's gimp @realDonaldTrump pushes Russia's most beloved dream of wrecking it?
Instead of roaring through the Fulda Gap, Putin bought a President.
"Reality is inside the skull. You will learn by degrees, Winston. There is nothing that we could not do. Invisibility, levitation -- anything. I could float off this floor like a soap bubble if I wish to. I do not wish to, because the Party does not wish it. You must get rid of those 19th century ideas about the laws of Nature. We make the laws of Nature."
-- O'Brien, 1984
Once you start to notice that a depressingly large number of our fellow citizens have become reprogrammable Orwellian meat-puppets, the rise of Trump is not hard to understand at all...
As 1984 explains, it doesn't matter that the Lottery doesn't really exist because, just likes Trump's Fake Wall, its purpose has nothing to do with the words the Party uses to promote it:
They were talking about the Lottery. Winston looked back when he had gone
thirty metres. They were still arguing, with vivid, passionate faces.
The Lottery, with its weekly pay-out of enormous prizes, was the one public
event to which the proles paid serious attention. It was probable that
there were some millions of proles for whom the Lottery was the principal
if not the only reason for remaining alive. It was their delight, their
folly, their anodyne, their intellectual stimulant. Where the Lottery was
concerned, even people who could barely read and write seemed capable of
intricate calculations and staggering feats of memory. There was a whole
tribe of men who made a living simply by selling systems, forecasts, and
lucky amulets. Winston had nothing to do with the running of the Lottery,
which was managed by the Ministry of Plenty, but he was aware (indeed
everyone in the party was aware) that the prizes were largely imaginary.
Only small sums were actually paid out, the winners of the big prizes being
non-existent persons. In the absence of any real intercommunication between
one part of Oceania and another, this was not difficult to arrange.
Of course, unlike Oceania (where listening to propaganda all day, every day is mandatory), all any Republican would need to do to figure out the truth is change the fucking channel.
You see, they choose to be this way.
They choose to idolize the grifters and demagogues who lie to them all day, every day, and they choose to freak out like a demon in a holy water hot tub whenever the truth brushes up against them.
Decade after decade they choose do this to themselves, and in doing so they choose to gleefully inflict massive suffering on others.
Your immigrant has no regard for human life, not even his own.
And for this reason, MAGAs, I want to impress upon you the need for extreme watchfulness. The enemy may come individually, or he may come in strength. He may even come in pretending to seek asylum. But however he comes, we must stop him. We must not allow immigrants to gain entrance to this country.
In the two years it has been my privilege to be your Dear Leader, I have always expected mindless, bellowing obedience from you, and you have never given me anything less than that...
For more on the most utterly unhinged ramble by Il Douche to date, you can look literally anywhere in the internet...
Having spent his entire adult life steeped in the goose-stepping, Hate Radio/Fox News-driven, policy-free conformity of the GOP, it is perhaps understandable that Tom Nichols would become confused and exhausted in the presence of a diverse political party debating actual, substantive issues.
When I said I'm Never Trump, I mean "Never," and will vote for anyone who isn't Trump. But liberals are already exhausting me and it's only 2019.
And of course if there is one thing Never Trump Republicans hate more than dirty, ill-mannered Liberals, it's dirty, ill-mannered Liberals who have the fucking temerity to being up the history of their Republican Party to remind them of just how we got into this fuck mess in the first place:
I’d say that the dumpster fire that is the modern Democratic party help create a decade of losses that made Trump seem plausible, but okay.
But strangely enough, on this point Tom and I are in complete agreement. Tom Nichols' Republican Party should definitely have been politically curb-stomped into oblivion decades ago.
Because, to quote Peter the Wise, you gotta stop 'em at the beginning:
I have a secret to tell you. A dark and terrible media-insider secret about which no one who knows speaks, and no one who speaks knows.
Ready?
OK, here it is.
You know all those cartoonishly shitty guests that show up like unkillable toe-fungus every week on every political panel show on teevee? The useless meatbags the media world? Hugh Hewitt and Rick Santorum. Erick Erickson. Jonah Goldberg. Ben Domenech. Ann Coulter. And on and on and on. That agonizingly long list of bottom feeders, freaks, demagogues, looters, liars, malcontents and grifters who, for no explicable reason, always find a chair waiting for them in the national media.
Well here's the shocking secret.
They do not, in fact, just randomly wander onto the sets to teevee programs, plop into a chair and begin spouting nonsense. Someone with the authority to decide who gets a seat and who does not actually invites them to be there. Works out the details with their representative. Sends a car for them if needed. Sometimes even puts them up at a nearby hotel. Preps them on the topic and the part they are expected to play in the puppet show they are about to stage. Makes sure they are camera-ready. Has them sign a release if they don't have one already on permanent file. Makes them comfortable while they wait. Provides them with food and drink. Puts a microphone on them and runs sound checks with them.
Then and only then do the little lights on the cameras indicating "live broadcast" flick to life. Then and only then do they begin spouting nonsense.
Which means (for example) that every step taken by Comcast/MSNBC between summoning the Cyborg Sent from the Future to Destroy American from his regeneration alcove to putting him on the air to blather word-like noises from his face hole --
lol -- an hour after MSNBC host calls out MSNBC contributor Hugh Hewitt, look who's on MSNBC pic.twitter.com/c5PXUnoGRZ
-- is intentional, mission-driven and by-the-book.
Which, in turn, means that until a significant amount of professional embarrassment is visited on the decision makers who approve of putting obvious lunatics like Hugh Hewitt on the air, the cable news political puppet show will never change.
Which realistically means that until some of the other guests on these panels are willing to risk their own position by putting the hosts of these shows in their sights -- are willing to call them out to their face for giving a platform to obvious bottom feeders, freaks, demagogues, looters, liars, malcontents and grifters -- the cable news political puppet show will never change.
In other words, the cable news political puppet show will never change.
