Sunday Morning Comin' Down

"Irresistible Conservative Farce finally meets Immovable Conservative Defect" Edition.

On my teevee machine this morning I watched the oddest thing:  NBC's Chuck Todd trying to administer a Voight-Kampff test to Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid:

Fake transcript follows:

Chuck Todd:  Senator Reid, you're in a desert, walking along in the sand when all of a sudden you look down and see a...

Sen. Reid: What one?

Chuck Todd: What?

Sen. Reid: What desert?

Holden: Doesn't make any difference what desert... its completely hypothetical.

Sen. Reid: But how come I'd be there?

Chuck Todd: You're from Nevada, right?

Sen. Reid: Yes.

Chuck Todd: So it's the Nevada desert and you're campaigning or whatever.  And look down and see Mitch McConnell. He's crawling toward you...

Sen. Reid: How did Mitch McConnell get all the way out into the Nevada desert?

Chuck Todd: Doesn't matter.  Anyway you reach down and flip Mitch McConnell over on his back,

Sen. Reid:  You make up these questions, Chuck, or does Phil Griffin write 'em down for you?

Chuck Todd:  Mitch McConnell lays on his back, his belly baking in the hot sun, beating his legs trying to turn himself over. But he can't. Not with out your help. But you're not helping.

Sen. Reid:  Whatya mean, I'm not helping?

Chuck Todd:  I mean you're not helping! Why is that, Senator Reid? 

Sen. Reid (thinking for a moment):  You know, let the son-of-a-bitch roast.

Actual transcript follows:

SEN. HARRY REID:  ...  I don't know why McConnell has done this to his senators. He's marching these men, women over a cliff. I don't think they're going to go. He said, "We're not going to meet with them. We're not going to hold hearings, we're not going to have a vote." But that façade is breaking as we speak. We now have about eight or nine senators who say, "Oh, yeah, I guess we will meet with him." We had a senator the day before yesterday that said, "Let's man up here. We are elected to take votes. We should be voting." And there's going to be a breakthrough here. I told Merrick Garland I want to meet with him--

CHUCK TODD:  Why do you think they're going to get a hearing? How are you going to get a hearing? Mitch McConnell has said, "No hearing at all." So why do you think you're going to get a hearing?

SEN. HARRY REID:   Mitch McConnell has said a lot of things. But his Republican senators are not going to go over that cliff with him. They're not going to do it. ...

So that happened.

This week I admit I have been both a little out of it and a little busy re-re-redoubling my efforts to find a full time job,  So I guess I didn't notice that at some point over the last few weeks the Republican establishment appointed Chuck Todd the Village's precinct captain.  And Precinct Captain.Chuck  really, really wants John Kasich to get out of the race.

Fake transcript follows:

Todd:  How dare you run for president in Utah?

Kasich: Jesus, Chuck.  Get a fucking grip.

Todd:  But if you keep this up, Failgunner Ted might not something something and then open convention!

Kasich: I'm campaigning so that people can hear my message.  They like my message,  This is what campaigning for president looks like.

Todd:   But... But... But...think of the good of the Beltway!

Kasich: Over the last nine month, you media dickheads gave Donald Trump something like $1.8 billion in free air time and you gave me nothing.  And now that -- surprise!  -- Trump is ahead, you want me to drop out so you can have your fucking horse-race?

Todd:  Well, to be fair, not all of the thousands of free handjobs we gave Donald were "positive".

We pause for a moment to remember Mark "Helicopter" Halperin practically peeing himself with excitement bouncing up and down on Uncle Donald's knee as he gave him a private ride on Trump Force One...

...and Joe Scarborough's many Trump "interviews" during which he braided Trump's pubic hair while asking him what his favorite ice cream would be if he could order any flavor he wanted.

Fake transcript continues:

Kasich:  Really, Chuck?  That's the story you're going with.

Todd:  Please get out.

Kasich:  You pundits need to get the hell out of Washington and talk to real people.

Todd:  Puh-leeeeease get out.

Kasich:  See you in Cleveland, asshole!

So that happened too.

As some of you may know, last week a pretty big house was dropped on MSNBC employee Joe Scarborough for making insulting, sexist remarks about Hillary Clinton's reaction to her victories on Tuesday.  It was in all the papers (from NPR)

Tuesday night — when Hillary Clinton was delivering her victory speech, after she won the primaries in Florida, North Carolina and Ohio — MSNBC host Joe Scarborough live-tweeted this bit of advice to her:

"Smile. You just had a big night."

Suffice to say, women - were not amused.

"Said no one to a man, ever" tweeted one.

Another offered: "Women LOVE it when you say this."

And on it went, until comedian Samantha Bee was prompted to launch the hashtag "Smile for Joe," thereby prompting a slew of women to post selfies as they make like Grumpy Cat: frowning, grimacing, and scowling.

(See the best of the #SmileForJoe responses here.)

In addition to MSNBC employee Joe Scarborough making an absolute preening ass of himself for the 1,578th consecutive day, MSNBC employees Chris Matthews and Michael Steele and Lawrence O'Donnell also thought it would be just a spiffing idea to cut away from Secretary Clinton's actual victory speech to weigh in on the timbre of her voice.  Because they are such helpful lads (h/t Crooks & Liars):

All of this, collectively, constituted whatchacall "news" and despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, Chuck Todd  still likes to pretend that "Meet the Press"is a "news" show.  Ergo, he covered this "news"...

...in the creepliest and most awkward way possible: by passive-voiciong his way completely around the  insulting, sexist remarks about Secrtary Clinton from his NBC/MSNBC colleagues and frequent co-panelists, Joe Scarborough and Chris Matthews and Michael Steele and Lawrence O'Donnell without ever mentioning their names or their network affiliations (actual transcript with emphasis added):

CHUCK TODD: When we come back, when male pundits say Hillary Clinton is shrill or yells too much, is that legitimate criticism or is it sexist?

...

CHUCK TODD:  So some people saw and heard, they heard a presidential candidate celebrating a huge night in which she took a huge step in winning the Democratic presidential nomination. But when others heard it many of whom were men, when they heard her speak, they called her "a bit shrill, loud, hyper aggressive." Some even said she "lacked grace."   And then there was the admonition that Clinton should smile more...

MSNBC employee Joy-Ann Reid and MSNBC employee Jose Diaz-Balart didn't exactly cover themselves with glory either, going right along with the okey-doke and agreeing not to go to Scarborough Fair either (from Crooks & Liars):

I guess the sight of Melissa Harris-Perry's career impaled on a pike at the entrance to the MSNBC cafeteria as a warning to anyone else who might be thinking about messing with Phil Griffin's management decisions had the desired effect.

Speaking of delicately avoiding unpleasantness...

Over on ABC, George Stephanopoulos pulled out a chair once again for giant-bag-of-spider-venom, Mr. Rich Lowry.  Mr. Lowry is the editor of America's white supremacist journal of record, "The National Review", and this week the only reason anyone outside of Rich Lowry's circle of fellow petty wingnut welfare queens would have been aware of his existence was the cover story of his magazine which excoriated white working class Americans as lazy, dependent human trash who "[whelp]...human children with all the respect and wisdom of a stray dog".

This headline from (God forgive me) the Breitbart Collective (comfortable ensconced at the other end of the wingnut welfare trough) accurately summarizes the National Review piece: 

National Review’s ‘Vile’ Cover Story Attacking Working Class Americans Is ‘Morally Reprehensible’

So of all the subject in the known Universe about which one might ask Rich Lowry to opine, take a wild-ass-guess which one George Stephanopoulos refused to touch with a barge pole?

Yep.  To damn scary and no way to "Both Sidereist" is away, so noted wee teevee coward George Stephanopoulos just ducked the whole thing.

Instead we learned that the selfish and delusional Rich Lowry believes that John Kasich is selfish and delusional:

LOWRY: Kasich is playing a selfish and delusional role here. There is no way a contested convention is going to turn to the guy whose third in delegates and it's probably unlikely, given the rules, his name will even be put in the nomination...

Also, now that giant-bags-of-spider-venom like Rich Lowry have lost the respect of the wingnut proles (gee, I wonder why?), Rich Lowry has some definite opinions about what other people should do vis-a-vis starting a third party for people like Rich Lowry should the human trash his magazine writes about so eloquently (and, presumably, their stray-dog-human-children if they're old enough in people-years) actually give Donald J. Trump enough votes to win the nomination of the Republican party outright:

LOWRY: We're not there yet. We'll have to wait and see if he actually wins the nomination and take a cold-eyed look at it because it'll be a big institutional decision for us. But there should be a third-party candidate because some Republicans and conservatives want a place to park their vote in good conscience. But the name of the game --  is stopping him from getting the nomination because everything after that is just managing --

The notion that Rich Lowry has a "conscience" is completely hilarious, but George Stephanopoulos declined to ask him about that too.  

Finally, as far as I can tell. nobody anywhere said a single word about America's Most Famous Conservative Public Intellectual, David Brooks, shitting a giant lump of sweaty horror in the pages of the New York Times on Friday.

Being a Beltway journalist must it must be exhausting these days, what with so much news to avoid mentioning and so many scary things not to talk about.