Sunday Morning Comin' Down

The Todding Point:  That moment when the number of consequential issues a network refuses to discuss exceeds the trivial crap it obsesses over.

Squeezed between commercials for Exxon and boner pills, Shuck Todd put out the network's best throw pillows and beanbag chairs so as to "kick it" ( as the young people say) with a couple of those crazy kids from the industry that wants to pimp the filthiest fuel on the plant through the most fertile farmland on the continent so that it can be refined in the Horrible Science Shocking Slime Kit that was once the state of Louisiana and shipped to China because Jobs ya Commie!  (transcript pending)

Unfortunately, Mr. Todd forgot to invite any environmentalists to his "rap session" (as the young people call it.)

Police suspect commerce was involved.

Speaking of police, Shuck Todd thought it would also be great fun to interrupt Rudy Ghouliani's post-Republican Great White Hope career as undead infomercial pitchman (Noun + Verb + 9/11 + Buy My Crap) 

and invite him over to Luke Russert's Parent's Basement to talk about The Blacks.

Hilarity of a terrible kind ensued:

...

“Mayor Giuliani speaks about what's, you know, unconscionable and what should be indicted. What should be indicted is the criminal justice system that continues to impose undue burdens on African American, Latino, and other poor people,” Dyson explained.

Giuliani disagreed, saying people aren’t focused on the reason behind the heavy police presence seen in black communities. “We are talking about the significant exception, 93% of blacks are killed by other blacks,” Giuliani argued.

Dyson called that a false equivalency, saying police officers are agents of the state sworn to uphold the law. “Black people who kill black people go to jail. White people who are policemen who kill black people do not go to jail,” Dyson responded. “If a jury can indict a ham sandwich, why is it taking so long?”

Giuliani continued to argue that the problem is rooted in the black community. “What about the poor black child that is killed by another black child? Why aren't you protesting that,” Giuliani asked Dyson.

The tense exchange continued as Dyson argued that most criminals involved in black on black violence end up in jail. That’s when Giuliani interrupted to ask, “why don’t you cut it down so so many white police officers don’t have to be in black areas?”

“The white police officers wouldn’t be there if you weren’t killing each other 70-75% of the time,” Giuliani said a few seconds later.

“Look at this! This is the defensive mechanism of white supremacy in your mind sir!” Dyson concluded.

Giuliani also defended Missouri Governor Jay Nixon’s decision to preemptively enact a state of emergency, saying it’s hard to second guess a governor.

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Down the dial at ABC, Matthew Dowd was on hand to remind us that for all the expensive Dental Office of Tomorrow sets and Giant Tablets and holograms, America's basic Beltway Media product remains forever the same: a bunch of hacks all competing to see who can say "Both Sides!" the fastest and loudest (h/t Heather at Crooks and Liars)

MATT DOWD: Well, he definitely grabbed the initiative in a way that would put his policies through. I think, one, we need to do something about immigration. That -- it's absolutely crucial that we do something about it. I think the manner with which the president did it doesn't do anything to help the political discourse in our country and doesn't do anything to fix the fundamental problem that exists in Washington, which is the means of government is broken, on both sides of the aisle. And as I said earlier this week, where -- when obstructionism meets arrogance, dysfunction is born. And that's what we have in Washington.

But for sheer, kneeling-in-one's-own-shit, back-alley paranoid-base-fluffing, no one could lay a glove on Senator Lindsay Graham's (R-Closeted Deeper Than The Mariana Trench) --

 -- very fine rendition of Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper...on an ether frolic...as interpreted by ghost of late, great Paul Lynde.

This.  Is.  CNN:

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Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, has some harsh words for the recently released Benghazi report, led by his own party.

"I think the report is full of crap," Graham told Gloria Borger on CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday.

"I don't believe that the report is accurate, given the role that Mike Morell (deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency at the time) played in misleading the Congress on two different occasions. Why didn't the report say that?"

The investigative report Graham is referring to was released Friday by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Michigan, and Ranking Member Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger, D-Maryland.

The report finds little to support the questions that have been raised about CIA actions on the ground in Benghazi the night of the deadly attack on September 11, 2012.

Graham, who has maintained a critical voice in the Benghazi controversy over the past two years, says it's "garbage" that the report finds no members of the Obama administration lied to cover up what happened in Benghazi.

"That's a bunch of garbage," Graham said. "That's a complete bunch of garbage."...

Because Senator Lindsay Goddamned Graham is goddamned well gonna leave that sweet, wingnut-cred-embiggening Bengaaaahzi cucumber stuffed down his goddamned pantaloons no matter what the hell those goddamned bullshit detectors say.

Finally, and just for the record, this weekend Peggy Noonan did her drinking at home "Sarah T Portrait Of A Teenage Alcoholic"-style.

And quite the bender it was!

Once you wade through all the Reagan-slobber, what you find is the Wall Street Journal's senior editorial writer hitting that perfect hard-core wino bellicose/lachrymose sweet spot that falls just after "verbose" and just before "comatose" (site pay-walled):

The Nihilist in the White House

This administration doesn’t build, it divides and tears down. Vindication is assumed.

...

This White House seems driven—does it understand this?—by a kind of political nihilism. They agitate, aggravate, fray and separate.

...

Jonah Goldberg of National Review had a great point the other day...

...the White House is a wisdom-free zone.

The president’s executive action on immigration is an act of willful nihilism that he himself had argued against in the past. It is a sharp stick in the eye of the new congressional majority. It is at odds with—it defies—the meaning and message of the last election, and therefore is destructive to the reputation of democracy itself.

And then, of course and inevitably, Nooners demonstrates that she is unclear about the fact that the Keystone XL pipeline will not, in fact, be transporting Canadian Club.

And there is the Keystone XL pipeline and the administration’s apparent intent to veto a bill that allows it. There the issue is not only the jobs the pipeline would create, and not only the infrastructure element. It is something more. If it is done right, the people who build the pipeline could be pressed to take on young men—skill-less, aimless—and get them learning, as part of a crew, how things are built and what it is to be a man who builds them.

...

America’s got her hard-hat on again. America is dynamic. “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.” Not just this endless talk of limits, restrictions, fears and “Oh, we’re all going to melt in the warm global future!”

You know, I'm so old I remember waaaay back thousands of years ago when Jesus made headlines riding a triceratops at the Kansas State Fair and a funny old sot from the Wall Street Journal named Peggy Noonan --

-- was very much against holding people -- specifically white Republican people -- in the White House accountable for anything up to and including lying us into the wrong war and torture.

The air waves were positively thick with stupid this weekend  -- (for example, the bullshit stylings of Michael Steele's on "No Labels" radio made for some choice listening for about 30 seconds -- [my own cruelly unfair transcript]

Steele:  The fucking President broke the fucking law, Absolutely. Positively. 100%.

Questioner:  So, how exactly did he break the law?

Steele:  Fuck you!  I ain't gonna take a test!)

-- but at some point I just had enough. 

The Mouse Circus remains as uniformly warped and awful as it has been since before I started the "Sunday Morning..," feature almost a decade ago

So mote it be.