Tuesday, July 08, 2025

Professional Left Podcast Episode 915: The Derp State


"It is not a fragrant world." -- Raymond Chandler

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Monday, July 07, 2025

Prepare Yourself...


...because you know it's coming.


I Am The Liberal Media



Elon Musk 2025 is...


...Andrew Yang 2020...


...No Labels 2010 ("Dead Center") ...


...Matthew Dowd 2016 ("So, Four Years Later, How's That Whole "Disrupt The K'rupt Duopoly!" Thing Working Out?") ...


...Ralph Nader 2000...


...George Wallace, 1968...


..Jill Stein, every fucking time:


All of these the spawn of the biggest lie in American politics.  The lie whose ubiquity has done more to warp American politics than any other.  The Big Lies that makes all the smaller lies possible.  And because I'm rather tired today, in lieu of brand new words the explain that Big Lie, I'm gonna drop in excerpt from eight years ago and take my wife out to lunch at a local diner.  

From "The Great White Party".

...
Because even as they they stood in the ruins of the Republican Bush Administration -- even as they watched the Republican Congress labor single-mindedly to lie, slander and sabotage the Obama Administration's Herculean efforts to clean up the ruins of the Republican Bush Administration and get us back on our feet -- nothing could override the frantic-junkie desperation of the Beltway brain caste to go right on pretending that Both Sides Do It.

And they're rich. 

And influential. 

And their bosses are rich and influential.  And the lobbyists with whom they crossbreed are rich and influential.  And the teevee networks that deliver their lies to millions and who depend on never offending anyone are crazy rich and influential.  And the Republican moles posing as "Independents" who knew god damn well that "Both Siderism" is the Big Lie that keeps the Right propped up are rich and influential.  

Which is why there has always been a shit-ton of money and job security available to any unprincipled hack willing to help the Beltway prop up it's foundational Big Lie of Both Sides Do It.

On the other hand, there is no profit or prestige to be found in telling the truth about the Big Lie of Both Sides Do It, for the same reason there is no profit or prestige in telling the Mayor of the "a coastal town in southern Norway" and Chairman of the Baths' Committee that the town's very lucrative spa is making people sick.
...
Peter Stockmann. —for his own family, as I was saying, as well as for the town he lives in.

Dr. Stockmann. It is I who have the real good of the town at heart! I want to lay bare the defects that sooner or later must come to the light of day. I will show whether I love my native town.

Peter Stockmann. You, who in your blind obstinacy want to cut off the most important source of the town's welfare?

Dr. Stockmann. The source is poisoned, man! Are you mad? We are making our living by retailing filth and corruption! The whole of our flourishing municipal life derives its sustenance from a lie!

Peter Stockmann. All imagination—or something even worse. The man who can throw out such offensive insinuations about his native town must be an enemy to our community.

... 


In Elon's case, he has hit Stage Five of the Seven Stages of Wingnut Grift.

Stage 1:  Completely clueless.

Stage 2: Buying into ludicrous MAGA/QAnon conspiracy theories about why things are fucked.

Stage 3:  Finding out the Right played you for a chump.

Stage 4:  Blame Both Sides.

Stage 5:  Third Party!!!


No Half Measures

Sunday, July 06, 2025

Saturday, July 05, 2025

Every Fucking Chicken In This Room



You may have noticed that Republican meatbags, their elected twats and grifters, and the talking heads who tell them what to think are all so very salty and out-and-proud fuck-you-Libtards these days.  And if you've not been around as long as some of us, you may think their Short Bus Swagger is something new and different.  

But it's not. 

Republicans are natural cowards, so they only get this way when they believe that they are, once and for all, safe from the consequences of their actions.  Then and only then, when they think the coast is clear, do they come strutting out with ALL CAPS and lots of exclamation points and misspellings like the preening simpletons that they are.  

This is a reminder that they were very much this same way back during the Before Time, when a small group of power-hungry neocons sold them on the idea that they could slake their innate thirst for sadism, restore their withered manhood, and find redemption, retribution, glory, national greatness and cheap gasoline in the sands of Iraq.  The war would pay for itself.  

And it would be so easy!  Over by Christmas!  

And you the very best part?  They could swaddle themselves in the flag and rub their super-duper-patriotism in the faces of all us smug, America-hating, terrorist-loving lefties.  

Plus there was plenty of cushion because, somehow, the gummint was now running a budget surplus,  so, hooray!  We also get huge tax cuts!

Even David Brooks couldn't resists counting all those delicious chickens before they'd hatched. 

And you know what? (He said, breaking the metaphor just a little) Those chickens did hatch!  Republicans successfully turned the shitty Afghan war they got into the excellent Iraqi war they hungered for.  They got their tax cuts.  They got their anointed-by-Almighty-Conservative-Christian-Jebus president.  They got the lowbrow Conservative media -- Fox News and Hate Radio -- night and day, braying their moral superiority over us dirty hippies.  The got the highbrow Conservative media -- National Review, Weekly Standard -- braying their moral superiority over us dirty hippies using bigger words.  

And they got the hated mainstream media to roll over for all over it.  

Then Reality showed up to eat every fucking chicken in the room.

First, there was the inconvenient fact that Osama bin Laden was still on the loose.  But after all, their anointed-by-Almighty-etc. leader, said he wasn't concerned, so big whoop, right?



Then, as it all began to fall apart, well, let's give it another six months.

And then another six months.

And then another six months.  

Then came disaster after disaster, all with big, bloody Republican fingerprints all over them.  

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.
What I did not fully appreciate at the time was the speed and ferocity with which both the legacy media and Conservative media would collude to shove the entire Bush administration down the memory hole.  And, as a corollary to that, I also underestimated how fast the Right would roll out a magical Bush-Off machine which would erase any trace of their complicity in all the heinous shit they had just been proudly cheerleading.   Or how, once again, the legacy media would go along with the okey-doke and let Republican voters off the hook for the horrors they had been so eager to unleashed.

So, here we are again but worse.  Republican foreign policies, trade policies and domestic policies are, collectively,  several dozen dangerously incendiary disasters just waiting to happen, all wired together, lacking only the right spark or two to touch it all off.  So touchy.  So precarious.  And Republican meatbags, their elected twats and grifters, and the talking heads who tell them what to think are all very ostentatiously stomping around, using shreds of the constitution to light up big, fat cheroots and flicking lit marches in every direction.

In the end, Reality will always get its chickens.




Burn The Lifeboats

Friday, July 04, 2025

Coming Soon...

...to a nursing home near you.

...to a rural hospital near you.

...to a neonatal unit near you.

...to a cancer patient near you.

...to a school district near you.

...to a promising clinical trial near you.

...to a physical therapy clinic near you.

...to a hospice near you.

...to hungry people where you live.

...to impoverished children where you live.

...to working men and women where you live.  

...to the poor and desperate you will never meet in countries far away.


No Half Measures




Morning Whiplash


"So much of what we do nowadays in communications is just online and bomb throwing....when you do actually talk to the person...it radically changes your perceptions of them." "Bill's kind of more than human though, he's kind of superhuman." Sam and Tim talk Bill Kristol:

[image or embed]

— The Bulwark (@thebulwark.com) July 3, 2025 at 4:45 PM


Hearing Sam Stein -- who used to write about Bill Kristol as Satan incarnate -- sing the praises of Bloody Bill Kristol was...fascinating.  

And, sure, he acknowledges that this might piss off some of those crusty, old Liberals who are, y'know, still hanging on to old grudges about the Iraq war from the Before Time, but whatever, bitches! 

Tempus fugit!  Bill Kristol is a great guy.  The best.   Possibly superhuman.  To know him is to love him. 

And that's when Sam unveiled his Policy For Judging Human Beings.  That while some people may seem terribly wicked from a distance or across the interwebs, once you get to know them, "when you do actually talk to the person...it radically changes your perceptions of them" (and, in this case, once they're signing your paycheck) they're pretty OK.

Basically, people are people, so even when people seem to be malignant, lying monsters, your go-to move should be to forgive and forget.  Absolve and move on.

Cool, cool.

So, given his radically revised Policy For Judging Human Beings, where does the newly enlightened Sam Stein stand on the question of those Republican people who lined up to vote for Trump's bill?

Oh, those people?  Those people all spineless, unprincipled, lying, performative scum who should rot in Hell.

Here endeth the lesson. 



Burn The Lifeboats



Thursday, July 03, 2025

Professional Left Podcast Episode 914: When, In The Course of Human Events


"In politics the middle way is none at all." -- John Adams.

The Professional Left is brought to you by our wholly imaginary "sponsors" and real listeners like you!