Monday, November 30, 2015

Hustle and Creflo Dollar


h/t Crooks & Liars

I didn't have any intention of writing this up, but the trickster gods of wordplay made me.

"Hustle & Flow" + Creflo Dollar
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Matt Lewis: In Search of True Conservatism



As I may have mentioned once or twice before, when Andrew Sullivan shuttered his site and declared "I will blog no more forever", Imaginary Conservatism lost one of its most prominent voices.  But Imaginary Conservatism is growth industry and a very lucrative one, so matter how many of its outlets stores go out of business, there will always be another one adding inventory to make up the difference.

Today, Daily Caller keyboardist, MSNBC regular and bilaterally-symmetrical-American, Matt Lewis, steps right up and stabs irony to death with the sharpened shinbone of the Last True Scotsman:



I do not know how to put this into words small and dumbed-down enough for Matt Lewis to understand, but as a five-finger writing exercise, I will try.

Donald Trump is not the end of Conservatism as we know it.

Donald Trump is the predictable and inevitable culmination of Conservatism as I have known it for my entire adult life.
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Sunday Morning Comin' Down



"Rhymes With 'You Blewitt'" Edition.

Donald Trump's successful nonstop lying strategy and the Planned Parenthood massacre had all the rodents at the Sunday Show Mouse Circus a little freaked out.  So no surprise that they used the occasion to demonstrate the firepower of their fully armed and operational drivel station!

Step One: stack the deck by making absolutely sure not a single Democrat appeared anywhere on any guest list of any Sunday show:
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Guest lineups for the Sunday TV news shows:

ABC's "This Week" - Republican presidential candidates Ben Carson and John Kasich.

NBC's "Meet the Press" - Carson; Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.

CBS' "Face the Nation" - Carson; Republican presidential candidates Jeb Bush and Lindsey Graham; Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.

CNN's "State of the Union" - Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee; Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas.

"Fox News Sunday" - Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina; Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C.
Step Two: offer every Conservative crackpot the opportunity to slip into their shiniest Both Siderist camouflage and dominate the discussion of the Planned Parenthood shooting spree...

...Hugh Hewitt, who now appears to be periodically co-hosting Meet the Press with Shuck Todd, goes all the way back to 1970 to find a hippie to punch:
HUGH HEWITT:  Well, the rhetoric of the SD did have an impact on Weathermen. And they did kill people. And that's why rhetoric matters. But at the same time, we can't sanitize an issue. I will talk about the Planned Parenthood practices. They were selling baby parts. I will be happy to engage people. But I think we do have to recognize there are disturbed people on both ends of the spectrum who can be impacted by this language.
..S E "Sippy" Cupp on CNN who's whole schtick is saying ridiculous, horrifying things on teevee:
Cupp: Well, I think it's a terrible idea to blame debate for what is a horrific act of violence. If you're going to do that then you have to say that leftist rhetoric was to blame when Floyd Corkins went into the Family Research Center and shot at that office. That's just a wasteful exercise and to hear your former guest John Hickenlooper, the governor of Colorado suggest that we need to somehow change our tone or police our rhetoric because of the act of what I'm assuming is going to be a madman is a distractions and a waste. 
...and, of course, Mental Ben (h/t Karoli at Crooks & Liars):





Step Three: On Meet the Press, spare no expense to land that vital MTP!SUNDAY! EXCLUSIVE!INTERVIEW! with Donald Trump!  Of course, corporeal Donald Trump could not be bothered to show up in-person for Shuck Todd's MTP!SUNDAY! EXCLUSIVE!INTERVIEW! and so poor Shuck was forced to stutter and splutter indignantly at a picture of Donald Trump while Trump played him like a little tin drum over the phone.
...
DONALD TRUMP:  ...Now, the Washington Post also wrote about tailgate parties. We're looking for other articles. And we're looking for other clips. And I wouldn't be surprised if we found them, Chuck. But for some reason, they're not that easy to come by. I saw it. So many people saw it, Chuck. And, so, why would I take it back? I'm not going to take it back.

CHUCK TODD:  Well just because somebody repeats something doesn't make it true. And I guess that's actually--

DONALD TRUMP:  Chuck, I've had hundreds. I don't mean I had two calls, Chuck. Even yesterday, I was in Sarasota, Florida. And people were saying they lived in Jersey, they--

CHUCK TODD: People weren't saying. If I said people--

DONALD TRUMP:  --moved down to Florida because taxes are a lot lower in Florida. They told me there that they saw it.

CHUCK TODD:  Mr. Trump. If I said, "Well, people have said Mr. Trump's net worth is $10 billion," you would say that was crazy. You wouldn't make a business deal--

DONALD TRUMP:  But that's a very different. It's much different.

CHUCK TODD:  --based on re-tweets and based on hearsay. You're running for president of the United States. Your words matter. Truthfulness matters. Fact-based stuff matters.

DONALD TRUMP:  Take it easy, Chuck. Just play cool. This is people in this country that love our country that saw this, by the hundreds they're calling, and they're tweeting. And there's a lot of people. In Sarasota, people were telling me yesterday they used to live in New Jersey. They remember it vividly. They thought it was disgusting.

So, these are people that saw it, too. The Washington Post reported it. Many, many people have seen it. I have a very good memory, I'll tell you. I saw it somewhere on television many years ago. And I never forgot it. And it was on television, too.

CHUCK TODD:  Let me ask you about your reaction to what happened in Colorado...
To yank NBC's leash a little tighter and rub Todd's face in his utter failure as a journalist, the very next day Trump undercut the whole idea of a MTP!SUNDAY! EXCLUSIVE!INTERVIEW! by blowing in a much longer phone call to Todd's down-the-hall colleague and competitor, Joe Scarborough.  21 nauseating minutes of wingnut fawning, flattery, groveling and ass-kissing wrapped up in a bow to make up for any offense The Donald might have taken at Todd's half-assed ankle-biting the day before.

And, finally, to round out the nightmare, the Meet the Press panel spent what felt like hours climbing into their own coffins, nailing the lid shut from the inside, and whispering eulogies to their own failure and incompetence.
HUGH HEWITT:   Trump supporters are like Lincoln Chafee: blocks of granite. And they are not moving easily. And they're not going to move over the 9/11 story. And fact checkers are themselves perceived to be agenda driven, in many respects. And they would like to see an equal amount of the time given to Hillary Clinton's claim to being under sniper fire in Bosnia or trying to join the Marine Corps or any of her, as are given to Donald Trump. But here's the key thing. Elizabeth Loftus is a professor at the University of California Irvine who has done a TED Talk on memory, which people have to watch. Because memory is different from facts. You cannot fact check memory.

MOLLY BALL:  But here's the political genius of Donald Trump, right. What he is doing is different. All politicians say things that are technically true but a little bit misleading or a lot misleading.

CHUCK TODD:  Truth is conditional....

MOLLY BALL: Yes. They'll just talk about the definition of "is." Donald Trump doesn't do that. He creates an entire alternate reality. And he does not back down.

ANDREA MITCHELL:  Because he pays no price for it with his supporters.
He pays no price because you and your colleagues decided that it was more profitable to spend the last 20 years playing footsie with the American Fascist Party than reporting on what they were really up to.  And once they buffaloed you into selling out honest journalism in order to appease them -- into giving up on the truth altogether and playing the Both Sides Do It Russian roulette with your own profession instead -- they owned you.  They could name any price and you would meet it, including mainstreaming their madness by pulling out a chair at your Meet the Press table for conspiracy mongering Conservative crackpots.

In fact, there is one sitting next to you right...now...

His name rhymes with You Blewitt...

But please continue: future generations will be fascinated to see just how completely you sold out your profession and your country,
MOLLY BALL:  And it is seductive to people because it is the world they want to live in, not the real world.

CHUCK TODD:  We contended this weekend, are we living in a post-truth world. What's interesting here, what do voters want? Do they want honesty? Or do they want something else? Let me put up two different comparisons that we did in our last poll about the honest and trustworthy question between Trump and Hillary Clinton...

ANDREA MITCHELL: ... But the fact is that Trump is positing that he can take care of people. And raising people's fears, as you said, is incendiary. And I think that the fact of truthfulness doesn't matter, especially when people like us are doing the fact checking.

CHUCK TODD:  Well, it's funny you talk about this. Look, PolitiFact put this up. And I gotta to show you on this. On the candidates that have had the mostly false to false ratings, three have had a majority of the facts that have been fact checked by PolitiFact have been treated as false or mostly false.

And it's the top three candidates in the Republican side. So, it's Carson, Trump, and Cruz. Eugene, basically it goes to Hugh's point. The fact checkers are viewed as having an agenda. So, the more they say, "You're wrong," the more their supporters say, "They're right."...

EUGENE ROBINSON:  I know. And by the way, the fact checkers did fact check Hillary Clinton on her under-fire claims. You know, I mean, it's not as if they haven't done all this stuff.

HUGH HEWITT: Just intensity Eugene, just intensity of coverage.
...

ANDREA MITCHELL:   And it's because the media are less credible as fact checkers.

CHUCK TODD:   Yeah, and the government. All right. We're going to pause here...
This was all chewed up and regurgitated for consumption by the Pig People by inexplicable MSNBC regular and fully paid-up member of the Conservative conspiracy goon squad, Matt Lewis:


As I have written before, periodically we Liberals chase off the Wingnut Eaters of Worlds for a little while. We run them back off into the angry Confederate mud. Back into the gnawing belly of hate radio. Back into the Armageddonist wet dreams of their Christopath spider holes and morally deformed gospels.

And then some secret signal goes out among the Beltway Media.  Wagons are circled.  Both Siderist myrmidons are deployed in force.  Any dirty hippies who would dare point out that the Beltway clowns are once again restarting the nightmare that almost wrecked the country last time are muzzled and cast out.

Then -- surprise! -- the Wingnut Eaters of Worlds come roaring back, twice as loud, twice as well-funded and twice as immune to factual reality.

And the Beltway clowns sit around their teevee tables, rending their $10,000 garments, wondering once again how on Earth is has come to this, and once again not daring to face anyone who would give them an honest, unvarnished answer to their stupid, stupid question.




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Friday, November 27, 2015

The Narcissism of Petty White Children


America's white supremacist journal of record finally answered the burning question, "What if Leni Riefenstahl were a stoned sophomore piddling around with Macromedia Flash in 1997?"

So the Professional Left decided to set it to music...




If you like what we do, and you use The Internets for shopping purposes, help support your favorite podcast by shopping through our Amazon link below.


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Wednesday, November 25, 2015

Black Friday. Cyber Monday. Sex Toy Tuesday. Booze-By-Mail Wednesday.


However you shop for the holidays, if you shop online, help support your favorite podcast by shopping through our Amazon link above.

Posting will continue as normal below, but I'll be keeping this at the top of the page for awhile.

Thanks!
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Professional Left Podcast #312 -- Happy Thanksgiving


"As God as my witness, I thought Jindal could fly."
-- Farewell address by Believe Again SuperPAC funder


Links:


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It Is Oddly Refreshing



That MSNBC's Squint and the Meat Puppet Rest Home for Aging Beltway Eunuchs and Strippers is no longer even pretending to be anything other than a war-mongering, Obama-bashing, Hillary-slandering Fox-lite hysteria factory.


Keep Knowing Your Value, Meat Puppet!


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Tuesday, November 24, 2015

They Thought They Were Free



Chuck Todd, host of America's preeminent public policy and politics program, "Meet the Press":
Donald Trump — the post-truth 2016 candidate

We've been around the political block long enough to know that almost all presidential candidates exaggerate, dissemble, take statements out of context and, yes, lie. But from the start of Donald Trump's presidential campaign (remember Mexican rapists?), he has taken this to a level we haven't seen before in American politics...
There's no consequence for them to say anything that they want to. They can make things up, they can go out and say flat out untruths and nobody's challenging them...
Tom Brokaw: famous teevee person, dean of NBC network news and, ironically, the revered, rose-colored-glasses chronicler of America's battle against fascism during World War II:
...And Donald Trump says that he saw in Jersey City thousands of people cheering when the Twin Trade Towers came down, it's completely wrong. It did not happen. He did not see it. But who's there to challenge him on that?
Keep in mind the systemic, paralyzing cowardice of our professional media as as you read an excerpt from "They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45" by Milton Mayer:
..It is clearer all the time that, if you are going to do anything, you must make an occasion to do it, and then you are obviously a troublemaker. So you wait, and you wait.

"But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the ‘German Firm’ stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.

"And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying ‘Jewish swine,’ collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in—your nation, your people—is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way.

"You have gone almost all the way yourself. Life is a continuing process, a flow, not a succession of acts and events at all. It has flowed to a new level, carrying you with it, without any effort on your part. On this new level you live, you have been living more comfortably every day, with new morals, new principles. You have accepted things you would not have accepted five years ago, a year ago, things that your father, even in Germany, could not have imagined.

"Suddenly it all comes down, all at once. You see what you are, what you have done, or, more accurately, what you haven’t done (for that was all that was required of most of us: that we do nothing). You remember those early meetings of your department in the university when, if one had stood, others would have stood, perhaps, but no one stood. A small matter, a matter of hiring this man or that, and you hired this one rather than that. You remember everything now, and your heart breaks. Too late. You are compromised beyond repair...
Solving the problem of American Conservatism's bold and metastasizing fascism could begin tomorrow by simply laying down some fairly drastic and material consequences for anyone in the media who 1) refuses to report the blindingly obvious facts of American Conservatism's bold and metastasizing fascism, or 2) obsessively seeks to deflect any such analysis with an army of bullshit Both Siderist straw men.  

From the NYT:
...
Mr. Trump relies on social media to spread his views. This is convenient because there’s no need to respond to questions about his fabrications. That makes it imperative that other forms of media challenge him.

 Instead, as Mr. Trump stays at the top of the Republican field, it’s become a full-time job just running down falsehoods like the phony crime statistics he tweeted, which came from a white supremacist group.

 Yet Mr. Trump is regularly rewarded with free TV time, where he talks right over anyone challenging him, and doubles down when called out on his lies.

 This isn’t about shutting off Mr. Trump’s bullhorn. His right to spew nonsense is protected by the Constitution, but the public doesn’t need to swallow it. History teaches that failing to hold a demagogue to account is a dangerous act. It’s no easy task for journalists to interrupt Mr. Trump with the facts, but it’s an important one.
But the problem is not Trump.  The problem is the GOP base -- those millions of American bigots and imbeciles which the Right has spent many years and billions of dollars to flatter and pander and shape into an electoral battering ram which is now so reliably paranoid, angry, Dunning-Kruger ignorant and programmable that they can be told what to think, what to buy and who to vote for by Rush Limbaugh, Roger Ailes or Donald Trump.

The problem is the GOP base -- America's very own, home-grown army of rage-drunk, half-mad chumps who are so fucked-in-the-head they can be profitably harvested by the same liars telling the same lies over and over again endlessly.  Which is why the problem of American Conservatism's bold and metastasizing fascism -- which has been decades in the making -- will not begin to be solved tomorrow.

Or the next day.

Or the next.

Because in the grown-up world. when the question is "Why?", nine times out of ten the answer is "Money".  And there is just way too much damn money to be made by Very Serious People from compromising and compromising and compromising with American fascists until, too late, they are compromised beyond repair.


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EstaBushment Candidate Model #3.2


Some assembly required (h/t darkblack for the wonderful starter kit.)

It turns out that however often the donor and brain caste of the GOP meet in quiet rooms and strategize about assembling an acceptable Establishment Candidate out of snips from old Jerry Ford speeches and dollops of Ronald Reagan's hair dye and Third Way/No Labels Both Siderist soft-core pornspeak, it turns out the Base of their party doesn't really give a shit about their schemes anymore.

The Base -- which the donor and brain caste of the GOP has labored ceaselessly to flatter and cultivate -- wants a shiny new war against the scary Mooslims.  And Moar Military.  Gargantuan tax cuts and gettin' rid of them there regulations that keep them from being rich as pirates.  Balance the Budget and Build the Wall!  Also end Planned Parenthood...and moochers and climate change hoaxers should be beaten in the streets.  The Base wants torch-lit rallies full of spellbinding speeches about their surpassing awesomeness and moral superiority.  They want to make a bonfire of the Enlightenment and dance around the flames, armed to the teeth, braying about Freedumb and Murrica.

And EstaBushment Fix It Man Jeb! ain't that guy.  From the WaPo:
Things are bad and getting worse for Jeb Bush. Just look at this chart.

...
Six percent. Six! That's roughly one-fifth the support enjoyed by Donald Trump, the leader in the new Post-ABC survey. It's also a precipitous fall from Bush's peak in March when he stood at 21 percent in the poll. There have been four Post-ABC polls done since late July; Bush started at 12, went to 8 percent in September, 7 percent in October and is now down to 6 percent.

Yes, you are right to point out, Bush supporter, that there is no such thing as a national primary — that this is a made-up construction of the media. The problem with that argument is two-fold: 1) Bush isn't in better shape in Iowa (5th) or New Hampshire (5th) than he is nationally and 2) this race is more nationalized than any in recent memory thanks to the presence of Donald Trump in it.

The national polling — and in particular, Jeb's trend line — reflects the fact that the buzz surrounding him has absolutely cratered over the past few months. The strongest argument Bush had going for him was his inevitability; he was the front-runner and was going to stay that way so you might as well get on board or run the risk of being left behind. With that message now rendered useless, Bush continues to cast around for another one that might work: One week he is the "fix it" guy, the next he is the one who is serious enough and strong enough to deal with the threat of terrorism.

None of those messages — nor the $20 million his Right to Rise super PAC has spent on his behalf in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina — has worked...
The Base fucking well wants Barrabas, it wants him now, and will not line up behind anyone who won't promise to deliver.

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Monday, November 23, 2015

Sociopaths Of Glory


On the PBS News Hour last Friday, Mr. David Brooks of the New York Times was made it very clear that he believes President Obama's ISIS/Syria policy to be a "rank failure" because POTUS does not do enough "action":
Now, as for President Obama, I think his policy is just a rank failure. And, frankly, he has had several — this has been a slow-rolling genocide for a long time. And in several stops along the way, there have been people in this administration and the other parties who have counseled some sort of action that I think he could have taken which have — maybe ameliorate some of the death we’re seeing.

And he has withdrawn and withdrawn and not taken those actions, even where red lines have closed — have been crossed. He had a training program which didn’t work. He has had token little efforts recently.
Now of course no one wants the kind of action we had 'round here in 2003 and the less said about what that "action" consisted of or who was beating the drum the loudest the better:
I would just say nobody is in favor of the sort of action we had in Iraq in 2003
And, of course, Mr. Brooks has no idea what correction action would actually look like:
And, therefore, you have to — I don’t know what the action is.
Or whether President Obama's actions have ultimately been right or wrong:
And so for him to talk self-righteously about other people and their response to the Syrian refugee — he bears some responsibility for the Syrian refugee crisis. And so he took some decisions to be inactive, which may have been right, wrong, but they were realpolitik decisions...
But Mr. Brooks damn well knows that, regarding action -- or at least thinking about action -- there should be, y'know, moar of it:
But you have to think more about the action.
I have nothing to add but...


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Sunday, November 22, 2015

Sunday Morning Comin' Down



"But it's his only line" Edition.

I knew things were bad, but they must be worse than I thought.  So bad that on "Meet the Press" journalist Helene Cooper stared forlornly into her 401k and wished someone other than Helene Cooper would get out there and do some journalism already (emphasis sprinkled in here and there to suit  my baroque tastes):
HELENE COOPER:   For instance, there's still no link between Syrian refugees and the attack in Paris, okay? Nobody is-- these guys are Belgian and French nationals, they're not Syrian refugees, we don't have a link to that yet. And yet, all of this rhetoric, I would love to see the press and I'd like to see the media really--
Journalist Tom Brokaw saw journalist Helene Cooper's pair of crocodile tears and raised her a big 'ol sad because won't some journalist somewhere who is not Tom Brokaw please for God's sake do some journalism?
TOM BROKAW:  Well, no, I just was thinking to myself that Governor Kasich is about to become the most popular subject on the right wing social media circuit after that appearance here this morning. (LAUGH)

CHUCK TODD:  Why is that?

TOM BROKAW:  He'll be taken on for challenging the idea that we have to have some kind of a security list for all Muslims who come into this country and not have a relationship with them around the world. When you talk about a war on Islam, you're talking about a war on Indonesia, for example.

Most of the subcontinent of Asia. So when he then challenges that premise on the part of both Donald Trump and Doctor Carson, who are doing extremely well on the polls, he's going to find himself a target on social media. You cannot underestimate the impact of social media in studying a lot of not just the outrageous positions, but flat out lies.

And Donald Trump says that he saw in Jersey City thousands of people cheering when the Twin Trade Towers came down, it's completely wrong. It did not happen. He did not see it. But who's there to challenge him on that?
After which, journalist Helene Cooper implored the gone-away gods of Journalism even more plaintively than before to Send Us A Deliverer! Someone -- anyone...as long as it's not journalist Helene Cooper -- to take down these motherfuckers with some motherfucking god damn journalism:
HELENE COOPER:   There's no consequence for them to say anything that they want to. They can make things up, they can go out and say flat out untruths and nobody's challenging them. It's very similar to what Tom said--
Helpfully, over on Tom Brokaw's Social Media at almost that exact moment, Matthew Dowd (former chief strategist for the George W. Bush 2004 re-election campaign who is now a full-on, born-again "It's not my fault because I'm an independent" paid ABC News employee) was demonstrating exactly how the Beltway tone-police will kneecap any hapless truth-speakers who dare to call the Republican Party out by its true name.

 Mr. Dowd performed this accidental service in a little game we like to call, "A Quisling says what?":

Meanwhile, back on "Meet the Press", Ron Fournier gallantly indicted everyone for being equally to blame for everything because at this point it is literally his only line:
RON FOURNIER:  I'd like to double back really quick on what we were talking about earlier. You know, I took a shot at our leadership earlier and I really believe in that strongly, but we as a people have to realize that we are changing in a way that we have to be more responsible. We are more scared than we were since 9/11 and we trust our institutions less than we did since 9/11.

We trust each other less than we did. And now with social media, we have to ability to ghettoize ourselves, to only listen to the views that we already agree with and demonize and attack everybody else. And when you combine that with this vacuum we have with leadership, that's why I really worry about what happens the next time we get hit. Are we as a people able to hold together?

 

And gliding over all, this supreme irony.

Those the knives-out truth ninja saviors for whom journalist Tom Brokaw and journalist Helene Cooper desperately pine?

Surprise!  They've been here the whole time.

They're those Dirty Hippies which are casually slandered on every Sunday show as part of the Beltway's Both Siderist ritual.  

The ones the Village kerbooted into the Media Phantom Zone long ago for telling the kinds of knives-out truths about Republicans which journalists like Tom Brokaw and Helene Cooper Absolutely Refused To Hear way back when it could  have made a difference.  

The Liberals, whose every vituperative, foul-mouthed utterance reliably drove journalists like Tom Brokaw and Helene Cooper to their fainting couches.  

Fainting couches under which journalists like Tom Brokaw and Helene Cooper now cower and beg for deliverance from Ted Cruz, Donald Trump and their mighty horde of wingnut bigots and imbeciles.

A mighty horde of wingnut bigots and imbeciles about which those Dirty Hippies have been trying to warn journalists like Tom Brokaw and Helene Cooper for 30 fucking years.

Meanwhile, over on Fox News, the Chief Propaganda Officer for the 1,000 Year Wingnut Reich garroted the timorous Beltway Both Siderists with the very pearls they were clutching and laughed and laughed and laughed all the way to the bank (from Media Matters):
On Fox News Sunday, Rush Limbaugh Fawns Over Donald Trump And Ted Cruz

Limbaugh: "Donald Trump Is, I Think, Doing A Great Service," And Ted Cruz Is "Brilliant, Just Absolutely Brilliant"

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Why We Lose


1) The poor don't vote.

2)  After decades stewing in Reagan's "welfare queen" poison, the poor are deeply resented by the damn-near-poor.*

From the NYT:

...Meanwhile, researchers such as Kathryn Edin, of Johns Hopkins University, found a tendency by many Americans in the second lowest quintile of the income ladder — the working or lower-middle class — to dissociate themselves from those at the bottom, where many once resided. “There’s this virulent social distancing — suddenly, you’re a worker and anyone who is not a worker is a bad person,” said Professor Edin. “They’re playing to the middle fifth and saying, ‘I’m not those people.’ ”

Meanwhile, many people who in fact most use and need social benefits are simply not voting at all. Voter participation is low among the poorest Americans, and in many parts of the country that have moved red, the rates have fallen off the charts. West Virginia ranked 50th for turnout in 2012; also in the bottom 10 were other states that have shifted sharply red in recent years, including Kentucky, Arkansas and Tennessee.

In the spring of 2012, I visited a free weekend medical and dental clinic run by the organization Remote Area Medical in the foothills of southern Tennessee. I wanted to ask the hundreds of uninsured people flocking to the clinic what they thought of President Obama and the Affordable Care Act, whose fate was about to be decided by the Supreme Court. I was expecting a “What’s the Matter With Kansas” reaction — anger at the president who had signed the law geared to help them. Instead, I found sympathy for Mr. Obama. But had they voted for him? Of course not — almost no one I spoke with voted, in local, state or national elections. Not only that, but they had barely heard of the health care law.
...
No one has any business being surprised by any of this.

*thanks for the catch
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Friday, November 20, 2015

Professional Left Podcast #311

ProfessionalLeft

"Yes, he moves very quickly for an overstuffed and unlikely Egyptian Pharaoh."
-- Batman


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David Brooks Shows America's Kids How To Bury The Lede Like a Pro




Mr. Brooks devoted 80% of his column today to praising Hillary Clinton's ISIS policies.  Of course, for Mr. Brooks, all experiences pale in comparison to his crack-high, career-making, priapistic delight at being a charioteer in Dubya's Beltway army, rolling into Baghdad and mowing down Liberals with his mighty keyboard...
Some of Clinton’s specific prescriptions were a little too limited and Obamaesque for my taste...
...but still, former Secretary Clinton's observations have been a cut above anything on offer from anyone else.
But she is thoughtful and instructive on both the big picture and the right way forward.
So what's going on here?

Allow me to explain.

First, as the biggest beneficiary of the Beltway Memory Hole, it really doesn't matter what David Brooks writes about anymore.  He can have a complete, public meltdown over the obvious fact that his Republican party has become an open moral sewer of bigots, imbecile and fascists one week and -- poof! -- a week or two later it is so completely forgotten that Mr. Brooks can get back to hacking out his standard wingnut/Both Siderist bilge and no one but a few, smelly outsiders will dare to say a thing about it,  

Which means that once Mr. Brooks grudgingly puts on his black shirt and get behind whichever fascist wins the GOP nomination, all of his friend in the media will agree to forget that it was ever otherwise. 

Second, there is a better-than-even chance that Hillary Clinton will be the next president of the United States, and the coin of Mr. Brooks' realm is insider access. Insider access has made him a rich man, so a little pre-election groveling is just a wise investment; 800 words of bet-hedging flattery back to which Mr. Brooks can point when he is arranging his first tet-a-tet with President-elect Clinton. 

Third, when there is an active, raving catastrophe right outside your door which you really, really, really do not wish to write about, change the subject.  Which Mr. Brooks' does, clumsily, about halfway though column.  In fact, if you look, you will see him actually telling you that 1) he damn well knows what the real story is, and 2) no way, no how is he going to touch it with a barge pole:
Some Republicans have stained themselves with refugee xenophobia, but there’s a bigger story here...
No, Mr. Brooks. Pretty much all Republicans have "stained themselves with refugee xenophobia" because your Party is, by design, an open moral sewer of bigots, imbecile and fascists.  

And right at the moment, there is no "bigger story here", no matter how deeply you bury the lede and desperately you and the rest of your Vichy Beltway collaborators pretend otherwise.
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Thursday, November 19, 2015

Il Douche



Trump Says He 'Would Certainly Implement' Muslim Database

NEWTON, Iowa — Donald Trump "would certainly implement" a database system tracking Muslims in the United States, the Republican front-runner told NBC News on Thursday night.

"I would certainly implement that. Absolutely," Trump said in Newton, Iowa, in between campaign town halls.

"There should be a lot of systems, beyond databases," he added. "We should have a lot of systems."

When asked whether Muslims are legally obligated to sign into the database, Trump responded, "They have to be — they have to be."

Later, Trump was repeatedly asked to explain the difference between requiring Muslim to enter a database and the requirement the Jews register in Nazi Germany.

He responded four times by simply saying, "You tell me."
...
And his proud, all-Murrican blackshirts:
Trump rises in wake of Paris attacks

Donald Trump has gained political strength since the Paris terrorist attacks last Friday, according to most of the polls released in the aftermath.

Trump’s gains show him once again confounding Beltway wisdom, where the widespread view was that such a grave event would lead voters to look toward White House candidates who are purportedly more mature and sophisticated than the erstwhile star of “The Apprentice.”

Instead, it seems that Republican voters have found themselves drawn to Trump’s emphatic rhetoric. “You have voters who are saying loudly and clearly that they want a strong leader to run our country, and that leader is Mr. Trump,” the business mogul’s campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, told The Hill. “Some of the other candidates didn’t have that vision. ... They have not had the foresight to predict these problems.”
...
The phrase "Beltway wisdom" needs to be welded into an oil drum and sunk once and for all into the deep, deep sea.
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The March of the Comcastrati Continues



Q: What could possibly alienate MSNBC's few, remaining Liberals viewers even more than programming an hour a day of Mark Halperin drooling into the laps of his Conservative puppet-masters?

A:  Reruns of Mark Halperin drooling into the laps of his Conservative puppet-masters.

From Politico (h/t Mr, Frostback):

MSNBC in talks with Bloomberg to re-air John Heilemann-Mark Halperin show

By HADAS GOLD and JOE POMPEO 11/19/15 02:32 PM EST Updated 11/19/15 02:52 PM EST

MSNBC is in talks with Bloomberg for a deal that would allow the network to re-air John Heilemann and Mark Halperin's hourlong 5 p.m. politics show, "With All Due Respect," New York Magazine's Gabriel Sherman reports, and we can confirm.

Rumors about a possible deal between the hosts and MSNBC have been circulating in recent weeks. Sources familiar with the talks confirmed they were in progress. According to Sherman, one scenario being discussed is to air "WADR" at 6 p.m., filling Al Sharpton's old time slot. Reached by phone and email a couple of weeks ago, Heilemann would not discuss the talks.

Such an arrangement with MSNBC would not be so novel for Bloomberg. Bloomberg produces and airs "Charlie Rose," but PBS gets first airing privileges. Heilemann and Halperin already have a relationship with MSNBC, appearing frequently as guests on "Morning Joe," an arrangement that has reportedly rankled some Bloomberg employees. Halperin was described to POLITICO as being "tight" with NBC News chief Andy Lack, who is said to be driving the discussions.

"WADR" debuted in October 2014 along with the corresponding website Bloomberg Politics, where Heilemann and Halperin draw reported $1 million salaries for contracts that are expected to continue through 2016...
These people hate us so damn much.

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Today In Both Sides Do It: With Malice Towards None, With Charity For All



The year was 2003.

The lead vocalist of The Dixie Chicks said a mean thing about President George W. Bush.

Here is what happened next...


The year is 2015.

After enduring six and a half straight years of the most openly reactionary, seditious, destructive and often racist opposition to any President since Lincoln with Vulcan-like calm and equanimity, (from Media Matters) --


-- delivered by the same Conservative asshats who lost their shit when the lead vocalist of The Dixie Chicks said a mean thing about George Bush, President Barack Obama has finally had it with their treacherous assholery:
Obama Chides Anti-Refugee Politicians for Being 'Scared of Widows and 3-Year-Old Orphans'
The reaction was swift and predictable.

The leading lights of the American Fascist Party cranked up the crazy to eleven:

Obama's 'Shameful' Policy Toward Middle Eastern Christians
Rush Limbaugh:
...
As President Obama continues his push to bring more Syrian refugees to America even in the aftermath of the Paris terror attacks by the Islamic State, talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh says the U.S. president is now a threat.

“I’m telling you Obama has become dangerous,” declared Limbaugh on his national broadcast Wednesday. “Where do you think the modern-day, 19- [or] 20-year-old terrorist comes from, Mr. President?”
...
From CNN:
Chris Christie: Obama 'created the refugee crisis' in Syria
Again from CNN:
Trump: Obama a 'threat to our country'
From TPM:
Cruz Hits Back At Obama: 'Lunacy' To Let 'Syrian Muslim Refugees' In US


Meanwhile, American Fascist Party's collaborators in the Both Siderist media blame Both Sides.

Both Obama, GOP sound ridiculous discussing ISIS
By John Podhoretz November 17, 2015

The inevitable Ron Fournier:

And while former Bush Regime speechwriter, Michael Gerson, did pen an entire column warning that blanket, anti-Muslim bigotry is the worst possible reaction to threats from one small group of well-funded monsters...
All our efforts are undermined by declaring Islam itself to be the enemy, and by treating Muslims in the United States, or Muslims in Europe, or Muslims fleeing Islamic State oppression, as a class of suspicious potential jihadists.
...he could not force his tiny pink pincers to type the word "Republican" even once.   This is because Mr. Gerson is a craven Beltway cog who does not want to wake up with a horse head and pink slip in his bed.  And so, instead of a very specific and easily-identified group of Republicans being called out by name, Mr. Gerson carefully weasels his way out of danger by blaming generic "American politicians" once again:
America’s politicians are feeding the Islamic State narrative
...
But if U.S. politicians define Islam as the problem and cast aspersions on Muslim populations in the West, they are feeding the Islamic State narrative. They are materially undermining the war against terrorism...

150 years ago, during his second inaugural address, Abraham Lincoln did not preen about glorious victory, or gloat about his martial might.  Instead he gave the kind of speech our modern Beltway is desperate to hear from the Kenyan Usurper: a plea for an end to the conflict which was tearing his country in half --
"...let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."
-- and a promise that his former antagonists would be greeted with kindness and generosity...
"With malice towards none, with charity for all..."
Lincoln's humble and sober second inaugural address is rightly considered one of the greatest speeches in American history.

But is also true that Lincoln would never have been in a position to deliver such speech in March of 1865 had his military not spent the previous four years fighting a bloody civil war designed to slowly and relentlessly destroy the Confederacy's will and means to fight.

Once the American Fascist Party is razed to its foundations and rebuilt as something other than a Koch Brothers production of Rush Limbaugh's wet-dreams, I for one will be delighted to give up this kind of blogging and write gentle paeans to true bipartisanship.

But until then, fuck these people.
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Dr. Ben Carson Huddles With Top Advisers




From the New York Times:

Ben Carson Is Struggling to Grasp Foreign Policy, Advisers Say 
...
“Nobody has been able to sit down with him and have him get one iota of intelligent information about the Middle East,” said Duane R. Clarridge, a top adviser to Mr. Carson on terrorism and national security. He also said Mr. Carson needed weekly conference calls briefing him on foreign policy so “we can make him smart.”
...

Mex-ah-co.
Can-ah-da.
Atlan Ocean.
Pastific Ocean.
Kelsey's Woods.
Kelsey's Creek.
Kelsey's Ocean.

Just what the Hell else do you Commies in the Lamestream Gotcha Media need to know?
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Wednesday, November 18, 2015

Of All The Souls I Have Encountered In My Travels, His Was The Most...



...Kaufman.




From ABC News:
Bobby Jindal Drops Out of 2016 Republican Presidential Race

Now Piyush "Bobby" Jindal can return to his best, first destiny: an obnoxious child making a small racket far away from me.








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Tuesday, November 17, 2015

History Is Written By The Winners...And Erased By The Wingers



For all the blood-drunk howlers frantic to somehow pin the Paris tragedy on the Kenyan Usurper, their hardest job is trying to bray loud enough so that everyone forgets just how ISIS got started...

First, Bush Administration policies created ISIS:
The hidden hand behind the Islamic State militants? Saddam Hussein’s.

CONFRONTING THE ‘CALIPHATE’| This is part of an occasional series about the militant group Islamic State and its violent collision with the United States and others intent on halting the group’s rapid rise.
...
The de-Baathification law promulgated by L.­ Paul Bremer, Iraq’s American ruler in 2003, has long been identified as one of the contributors to the original insurgency. At a stroke, 400,000 members of the defeated Iraqi army were barred from government employment, denied pensions — and also allowed to keep their guns.

The U.S. military failed in the early years to recognize the role the disbanded Baathist officers would eventually come to play in the extremist group, eclipsing the foreign fighters whom American officials preferred to blame, said Col. Joel Rayburn, a senior fellow at the National Defense University who served as an adviser to top generals in Iraq and describes the links between Baathists and the Islamic State in his book, “Iraq After America.”

The U.S. military always knew that the former Baathist officers had joined other insurgent groups and were giving tactical support to the Al Qaeda in Iraq affiliate, the precursor to the Islamic State, he said. But American officials didn’t anticipate that they would become not only adjuncts to al-Qaeda, but core members of the jihadist group.

“We might have been able to come up with ways to head off the fusion, the completion of the Iraqization process,” he said. The former officers were probably not reconcilable, “but it was the labeling of them as irrelevant that was the mistake.”
...
And then the Bush Administration's hand-picked puppet government gave ISIS their direction and focus:
...
Some of them had fought against al-Qaeda after changing sides and aligning with the American-backed Awakening movement during the surge of troops in 2007. When U.S. troops withdrew and the Iraqi government abandoned the Awakening fighters, the Islamic State was the only surviving option for those who felt betrayed and wanted to change sides again, said Brian Fishman, who researched the group in Iraq for West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center and is now a fellow with the New America Foundation.

Among them was Brig. Gen. Hassan Dulaimi, a former intelligence officer in the old Iraqi army who was recruited back into service by U.S. troops in 2006, as a police commander in Ramadi, the capital of the long restive province of Anbar.

Within months of the American departure, he was dismissed, he said, losing his salary and his pension, along with 124 other officers who had served alongside the Americans.

“The crisis of ISIS didn’t happen by chance,” Dulaimi said in an interview in Baghdad, using an acronym for the Islamic State. “It was the result of an accumulation of problems created by the Americans and the [Iraqi] government.”
...
Yes, it was the administration of Nouri Kamil Mohammed Hasan al-Maliki which both drove its own countrymen into the arms of ISIS and showed its American benefactors the door.

So how the Hell did Maliki come to be prime minister of Iraq?

Fareed Zakaria: Who lost Iraq? The Iraqis did, with an assist from George W. Bush
...
But how did Maliki come to be prime minister of Iraq? He was the product of a series of momentous decisions made by the Bush administration. Having invaded Iraq with a small force — what the expert Tom Ricks called “the worst war plan in American history” — the administration needed to find local allies. It quickly decided to destroy Iraq’s Sunni ruling establishment and empower the hard-line Shiite religious parties that had opposed Saddam Hussein. This meant that a structure of Sunni power that had been in the area for centuries collapsed. These moves — to disband the army, dismantle the bureaucracy and purge Sunnis in general — might have been more consequential than the invasion itself.

If the Bush administration deserves a fair share of blame for “losing Iraq,” what about the Obama administration and its decision to withdraw American forces from the country by the end of 2011? I would have preferred to see a small American force in Iraq to try to prevent the country’s collapse. But let’s remember why this force is not there. Maliki refused to provide the guarantees that every other country in the world that hosts U.S. forces offers. Some commentators have blamed the Obama administration for negotiating badly or halfheartedly and perhaps this is true. But here’s what a senior Iraqi politician told me in the days when the U.S. withdrawal was being discussed: “It will not happen. Maliki cannot allow American troops to stay on. Iran has made very clear to Maliki that its No. 1 demand is that there be no American troops remaining in Iraq. And Maliki owes them.” He reminded me that Maliki spent 24 years in exile, most of them in Tehran and Damascus, and his party was funded by Iran for most of its existence. And in fact, Maliki’s government has followed policies that have been pro-Iranian and pro-Syrian.
...
Like the Cornerstone Speech and the details of the various Traitor States' articles of secession, I find it handy to have these these bits of historical fact in my back pocket  at all times.  Not that history and facts ever changed the mind of a committed wingut, but I have found that when confronted immediately with the knowledge that you are onto their bullshit, it often shuts them down mid-rant, after which they skulk away and go looking for a less informed citizen at which to blather.  
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Today In Both Sides Do It: Ray Lahood


Like our recent Trump Moronburg Rally, here is another event taking place right down the street which I will not be attending unless some media outfit wants to scare me up some press credentials hurry-up-quick:
November 17, 2015
Ray Lahood
Where: Lincoln Presidential Library Atrium
The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library is hosting Ray LaHood who has argued that partisan nastiness and gamesmanship are frustrating efforts to address the nation’s challenges, from a crumbling infrastructure to terrorism to economic growth. Discussion will be at 12:30pm in the Library’s Atrium followed by a book signing. Free admission and no reservation is required.
As I have mentioned before, books by former Secretaries of Transportation about, say, slow but steady improvements in the handling of America's intermodal freight transportation issues in turbulent times do not fly off the shelves or get one invited to make the rounds of the Sunday Shows.

And so...
Promised Bipartisanship, Obama Adviser Found Disappointment
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David Brooks: God and Mammon at Yale




David Brooks, November 17, 2015:  Finding Peace Within the Holy Texts
We live, as Sacks writes, in a century that “has left us with a maximum of choice and a minimum of meaning.” The secular substitutes for religion — nationalism, racism and political ideology — have all led to disaster. So many flock to religion, sometimes — especially within Islam — to extremist forms.
David Brooks, November 13, 2015:  My $120,000 Vacation
I tried but failed to ward off the second bottle of champagne. I was sitting in my room at the Four Seasons Hotel Istanbul at Sultanahmet, on the phone with a friend. The hotel staff had already brought me chocolates and Turkish delight to welcome me. They’d put bookmarks in the books I’d left on the desk. They’d replaced my bathmat midday because I’d gotten the first one wet. They’d arranged my notes for this article in clean little stacks. There was already one ice-bucketed bottle of champagne on the dining room table when the door chime rang.
David Brooks, November 17, 2015:  Finding Peace Within the Holy Texts
The pathological dualist can’t reconcile his humiliated place in the world with his own moral superiority.
David Brooks, November 13, 2015:  My $120,000 Vacation
They treated the crew as friends and equals and not as staff. Nobody was trying to prove they were better informed or more sophisticated than anybody else. There were times, in fact, when I almost wished there had been a little more pretense and a little more intellectual and spiritual ambition.
David Brooks, November 17, 2015:  Finding Peace Within the Holy Texts
Justice demands respect of the other. It plays on the collective memory of people who are in covenantal communities: Your people, too, were once vulnerable strangers in a strange land. 
The command is not just to be empathetic toward strangers, which is fragile. The command is to pursue sanctification, which involves struggle and sometimes conquering your selfish instincts...
David Brooks, November 13, 2015:  My $120,000 Vacation
I’m generally a frenetic traveler, but there were moments when I was frustrated we couldn’t stop for even three minutes to really look at what we were seeing. There were several moments when I was frustrated at how little time was set aside for solitary contemplation.
David Brooks, November 17, 2015:  Finding Peace Within the Holy Texts
Moreover, God frequently appears where he is least expected — in the voice of the stranger — reminding us that God transcends the particulars of our attachments.
David Brooks, November 13, 2015:  My $120,000 Vacation
The people on this trip loved the experience. They were very satisfied customers. But they did have moments of exhaustion. Multiple bucket list items per day — the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul? Check. The main market in Marrakesh? Check! When I asked the guests what their favorite stop was, a plurality said the Maldives, where they got a chance to sit, pause and enjoy the beaches.
David Brooks, November 17, 2015:  Finding Peace Within the Holy Texts
It may seem strange that in this century of technology, peace will be found within these ancient texts. But as Sacks points out, Abraham had no empire, no miracles and no army — just a different example of how to believe, think and live.
David Brooks, November 13, 2015:  My $120,000 Vacation
But sometimes money allows you to see too many things, too quickly. Sometimes if you seize all the opportunities your money affords, you may end up skimming over life and nothing is deep enough to leave a mark.
...

And, yet, I must confess, other sweet small moments came when I just said what the heck and enjoyed the self-indulgence. The caviar in Russia was really nice. So was the beautiful hotel pool in Morocco, the sweet staff at every stop and the little cubes of Turkish delight. And yes, over the course of the three days at the Four Seasons in Istanbul, I did drink both bottles of champagne.

Of course, we all have a responsibility to reduce inequality in our society. But maybe not every day.

Individuals who are not vituperative, foul-mouthed bloggers to whom the NYT gives the back of its hand attracted the attention of the Times' Public Editor long enough to wrangle an explanation of who, exactly, paid for the already-wildly-overcompensated David Brooks' wildly expensive vacation, which Mr. Brooks somehow squeezed in between his other vacations, "book leaves" and book-tour speaking engagements.  Once again, it turns out that the New York Times footed the bill for Mr. Brooks to hang out with globe-trotting millionaires long enough for him to piously leave the gun but smugly take the canoli:
Many readers wanted to know the arrangements behind David Brooks’s participation on part of a $120,000 luxury trip, which he wrote about for T: The New York Times Style Magazine. Many on Twitter and elsewhere charged that this must be a junket — a free trip for a journalist, which is, of course, an ethical no-no. (Others objected in strong terms to the article’s concept, its tone, and the The Times’s relative wisdom of spending a large sum of money for this purpose.) The Times’s standards editor, Philip B. Corbett, assured me late Friday that the company had paid for the portion of that trip for which Mr. Brooks was present. (Yes, that covered both bottles of champagne.) A sentence in the article making the arrangement clear to readers would have been a good idea.
James Warren suggests that as long as the Public Editor of the NYT is feeling all disclose-y, perhaps she could also talk about the fact that the already wildly-overcompensated Mr. Brooks also routinely picks up an additional $40K here and $60K there, rhapsodizing for an hour or so to audiences of America's Most Privileged People about the importance of humility (emphasis added):
...But while the Times is in disclosure mode, this question: Why doesn't the paper routinely tell readers about the outside paid speaking gigs of Brooks and others? The Times has traditionally made a distinction (arguably without a difference) between the paid speaking rules for newsroom personnel, who report to the editor, and those of op-ed and editorial writers, who are under the aegis of the publisher and generally free as a bird. That's folly. A single luncheon or dinner appearances can bring as much as some journalists earn in a year, with the likes of Brooks and Tom Friedman able to pick up gigs for anywhere from $30,000 to $75,000. Even assuming their ethical rectitude, shouldn't readers know about even the hint of potential conflict suggested by the plush oratorical buckraking?
In case you haven't figured it out by now, the most sacred of David Brooks' "Holy Texts" have always borne faces of dead presidents and come wrapped in American Bankers Association compliant currency straps. 


And anyone who thinks otherwise deserves what they get.

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