Sunday, January 29, 2017

Sunday Morning Party Line


"The Holocaust, boy, I don't know." -- The Bastard President


REINCE PRIEBUS DEFENDS THE WHITE HOUSE’S TONE-DEAF HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE DAY STATEMENT

There was no mention of Jews or anti-Semitism in the statement released on Friday.

Friday was International Holocaust Remembrance Day, held every year on January 27, the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau. The White House, which issues a statement on the day every year, is being criticized for the one released on Friday which honors the “victims, survivors, and heroes” of that time, but fails to make any mention of the Jews or anti-Semitism.

Many thought it was odd that Donald Trump declined to honor Jews specifically, who, history shows, were the most persecuted group during the Holocaust. When CNN asked for some kind of clarification, Trump administration spokeswoman Hope Hicks said that “despite what the media reports, we are an incredibly inclusive group and we took into account all of those who suffered.” In comparison, both Barack Obama’s and George W. Bush’s statements mentioned either Jews, Israel, or anti-Semitism by name.
...
Because they wouldn't want to piss off all the loyal brownshirts and whitesheets whose tireless, unhinged rage and racism helped put The Bastard President in the White House.

You know, believe it or not, I've been watching the Sunday Gasbag Cavalcade (aka "The Mouse Circus", aka "Voice of Empire") for going on 12 years now.  And I've kept at it year after year because the Sunday Shows offered the perfect Petri dish for everything that is fucked-in-the-head about our nation's unholy beast-with-two-backs: politics and media.

In this country, politics and corporate media are incestuously co-dependent to the point where the players are often interchangeable.  The careers and "credibility" of disgraced political has-beens and sleazy Beltway PR flaks are perpetually replenished and swapped around through the magic of our corporate media's revolving door.  And so. for a time, the best place to observe  the next Big Political Lie being tweaked and test-driven in vitro was the Sunday Shows.

And for the time being I'll go right on doing so.

But the day has come where no one with a functional conscience needs a microscope to observe the political pathogens that are killing this country.  The deadly Conservative bacilli of 12 years ago have long since grown large enough to shatter their test tubes.  Now they are Godzilla-sized, mad beasts, stomping the country to pieces, drunk on Freedumb and Libtard Tears.   And now that the Right has irrevocably crossed that line between everyday villainy and cartoonish super-villainy, it's really not that tricky to sort out the players and their agendas anymore.

If you are still a Trump-supporting Republican, or Conservative or Tea Bagger or whatever verbal cabbage leaf you're hiding under these days, you are either an irredeemably evil person or an irredeemably ignorant meathead.  You're also very probably a racist.  Everyone you trust to tell you the truth is a liar and a fraud.  You are unfit to participate in a grownup democracy at any level and your ideological and cultural opinions are childish nonsense or racist trash.

Hugh Hewitt is one such viperish pile on ambulatory filth.  For some reason, NBC rented him out to CBS Sunday morning so that he could share his shameless grovelings with an entirely different audience.

More about Hugh later.

If you are an eleventh-hour, Come-to-Jesus Trump critic who was perfectly happy making a living by lying and hate-mongering until the monster you built and who filled your bank account finally turned on you, then you are deserving of a circle in Hell even deeper and more agonizing than the simpletons and bigots whose paranoia and idiocy you exploited for profit all these years.  Because you knew better, but you didn't care because the only people your monster was destroying were people you never gave a shit about anyway.

Charlie Sykes is one of these.  Also Rick Wilson.  Both of whom for some reason now enjoy a respected, semi-permanent gig on MSNBC where everyone very politely avoids asking them embarrassing questions about their recent past..   In fact, the cable news desks and the op-ed pages of our great nation are practically bursting at the seams with these scuttlefish.

Then come the Both Siderists, who realize at some level that something has gone horrendously wrong with the Republican Party, but that it is career-suicide to say this out loud in public.  90% of all Both Siderists are current-or-former Republicans or Conservatives who would have you believe that someone snuck in in the dead of night and wrecked the One True Faith while they were sleeping...but that, uh, Liberals are just as bad because, something something, Woodstock!

(The other 10% are Glenn Greenwald and Susan Sarandon.)

And while I suspect a few Both Siderists are the result of a complete psychotic break with reality (looking at you Matthew Dowd) most Both Siderists are nothing more than soulless human windsocks who have reduced their entire career to a simple, repeating algorithmic lie (Both Sides!Both Sides!Both Sides!) for money.  This group includes David Brooks.  David Frum.  Michael Gerson.  Matthew Dowd.  Ron Fournier.  Kathleen Parker.  Ross Douthat,  Chuck Todd.  Cokie Roberts.  And on and on and on.

Basically, Both Siderists occupy the same malebolge as the eleventh-hour, Come-to-Jesus Trump critics, but they get the top bunk.

So...these are the people in your political media neighborhood.  It isn't subtle anymore.  It isn't artful, Republicans are monsters, period.  The Center is crawling with collaborators who are more than willing to drive the monsters' getaway car.  Period.

So let's get back to Hugh Hewitt, of Uncanny Valley, USA:
Uncanny Valley -- used in reference to the phenomenon whereby a computer-generated figure or humanoid robot bearing a near-identical resemblance to a human being arouses a sense of unease or revulsion in the person viewing it.
Hugh Hewitt, who used to invoke James O'Keefe and whip himself into howling fantods over the seventeen kinds of Hell President Hillary would have to pay for having been involved in a legitimate, professionally-run and highly transparent foundation that did good work all over the world.

Hugh Hewitt, who now uses his mouth to shovel shit for The Bastard President, who -- according to Hewitt -- may just be having the most awesome fucking week ever!
HEWITT: I think it is in keeping with a ten day campaign to frame President Trump’s rollout. A man of action, keeping his campaign commitments, as was just said. I agree with everything that’s been said. I do think the press reaction is somewhat hysterical. ... He had a very good, defining ten days. And this does put a cap on his extreme vetting. He’s keeping his campaign commitments.

HEWITT: ... But he’s not targeting Muslims. He did not send out the dreamers. And so there is a moderation underneath all of these actions, which is, I think, admirable and very politically useful...

HEWITT: ...I thought that the prime minister, who’s remarkable, and the president had a great press conference. ... I think the best part of a very strong day, ten days, which had its bumps, obviously...

HEWITT: They -- they have to get Tom Price confirmed because he is actually the brain on what you replace Obamacare with. There is a fight within the caucus over repeal now and replace later, and I am with the repeal it now and give it a dead date so that it is dead by say September of -- two years from now, September, 18 months forward. And then come up with a replacement. Do that in the reconciliation. Get it done.

HEWITT: ...Steve Bannon is the Valerie Jarrett of this White House.
Hewitt is the Renfield of this White House.

Meanwhile, back where Hewitt usually plies his deviant craft, Chuck Todd was apparently seized by an acid flashback that jolted him back to the days when his hair flowed like the mighty Mississippi and he practiced some form of real journalism.  Like a fireworks barge accidentally exploding in the middle of the night, I don't plan on seeing such a display again soon, but it sure did light up the sky unexpectedly for a few minutes.

Reince Priebus Doesn't 'Regret' Not Mentioning 'Jews' In Holocaust Statement


...
Priebus' entire interview with Todd was combative because Priebus gaslighted the host by refuting every single chaotic moment the Trump administration had created in the last few days. And Todd got visibly more and more frustrated.

But Chuck Todd deserves praise today for not retreating when Trump surrogates spew nonsense and lies.

At first Todd said he thought it was just an unintended error not to mention the Jews during the genocide against them, but that wasn't the case at all. Clearly, the anti-Semitic and white nationalist Steve Bannon put the words in his puppet Trump's statement, minimizing the horrors of genocide against the Jews in favor of an offensive spin on "All Lives Matter."

Todd then asked, "There was an issue with on Friday the White House put out a statement on Holocaust Remembrance Day. And there wasn't a mention of Jews in the statement of any, of the victims of the Holocaust that a majority of them were Jewish."...
Finally, as the Sunday Gasbag Cavalcade went about its little, self-important affairs, the nation continued with the critical business of trying to cough up the poison the Republican party is pouring down its throat:
Protests Erupt Nationwide for Second Day Over Trump’s Travel Ban

Thousands of protesters gathered at airports and cities nationwide for a second day on Sunday to decry President Donald Trump's executive order that temporarily restricts entry to the U.S. from seven Muslim-majority countries and indefinitely bans Syrian refugees from crossing into the country.


Within 24 hours of Trump signing the executive order, its impact was resonating worldwide as officials struggled to interpret Trump's decision — leaving refugees and immigrants who had already been vetted and approved to enter the country detained at airports and stuck in legal limbo...

The Holocaust, boy, I don't know.



Of course we did have a Great Debate, didn't we?  Or at least we tried to.  Sort of.  Hillary tried like hell to talk about policy and people, but the media wanted to talk about emails and horse-races, and since they own the cameras, that's all we heard about.  I wonder if Phil Griffin will ever dare show his face in public again long enough to explain why it was so much more god damn important to fill air-time with shot after shot of empty Trump podiums than any discussion of any of the dozens of policy proposals the Clinton campaign had developed to address the real problems of real people?

Although to be fair, it wasn't as though Donald Trump kept his bigotry and malignant ignorance hidden under a bushel.  Quite the contrary: he whipped it out and waved it around at every opportunity.

And the Pig People loved him for it.

16 comments:

dinthebeast said...

I thought that Rinse Pubis sort of gave up the game when he said that they would like to wipe the history books clean of the Holocaust or some such Freudian horseshit.

-Doug in Oakland

bluicebank said...

Drift: "And so. for a time, the best place to observe the next Big Political Lie being tweaked and test-driven in vitro was the Sunday Shows."

As a former wire editor and even more former news junkie (because it was my job) I applaud you. The very second I quit the news, I stopped watching television -- what Marshall McLuhan called a "detached" viewing. That perception that the "medium is the message" was encapsulated in Peter Sellers' last movie, "Being There."

The sheer effort to view such palaver without succumbing to its poison is enormous. To turn Chauncey Gardener's phrase on its head, "I don't watch; I read."

So, thanks for the filtering.

TimJ said...

Poor guy (not poor guy) presents like a hostage, as if there is someone just off screen with a gun pointed at him.

Somewhat off topic, I laugh every time I think of the Republicans who claimed that under Obama "our friends didn't respect us and our enemies didn't fear us". It wasn't true then, but it is certainly true now.

bowtiejack said...

Do we have any idea what President Bannon's future plans are?

Unknown said...

The place for the eleventh-hour, Come-to-Jesus Trump critic who helped create the monster is Antenora in the Ninth Circle (Cantos 32-33). Thank you for your service.

Neo Tuxedo said...

Good point, Jay Kay.

(Also, malebolge as a common noun is plural; the singular would be bolgia.)

And, as long as we're assuming the system of Dante's hell, I'm of the opinion, as masterposted here, that the Emanuel AME killer's soul is already in Ptolomea, dragged there by the spiritual gravity of a verdict of irrevocable damnation.

bowtiejack said...

This whole thing is scary enough, but something much bigger, much worse and not at all inept or amateurish may be going on:

https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/trial-balloon-for-a-coup-e024990891d5#.4wf82svh8

Pablo in the Gazebo said...

"And the Pig People loved him for it."
They still love him for it and they are digging in their hooves, squinting their eyes, and clenching their fists. They don't like push-back because unlike actual pigs they have very, very thin skin. To them a subtle correction is like a sledgehammer blow, which makes it all the more fun.

justsomeguy05 said...

I suspect that "inclusive" means "we are really honoring the 20 million Russians that died in WW II". I doubt that it refers to the gays and romani people in germany.

Unknown said...

That's a fine reference and application, Neo Tuxedo. As a literary device for expressing contempt, a "do not pass Go" to the lowest circle of hell really is beyond compare.

Unknown said...

"This isn't a Muslim ban!!" Right, and...say it with me...RADICAL ISLAMIC TERRORISM ("Obama wouldnt say, I will") has nothing to do with Muslims. Who says you can't be a Methodist and be a Radical Islamic Terrorist? Who's the bigot now? You're the bigot!

And the Trail of Tears wasn't just about the dispacement of Native Americans. Won't anyone think of the soldiers and scouts who had to suffer, too? Let's just say "people suffered" during that march, okay?

And, you know, there were white people who suffered and died for during the Civil Rights era, so let's just say a lot of people suffered and it was too bad for everyone. It wasn't just a black thing, so let's not single them out.

Stellours said...

Just remember every single one of them are ignorant, racist, and greedy. I've substituted homophobic, myogenic, and what have you, for the racist part but the other two are always the same part of the three legged stool that holds up these people. Even the supposedly 'poor white people' are horribly greedy. That's where you get women or people of color joining, because they are also greedy and stupid.

jim said...

Priebus looks like he's holding up today's newspaper in a hostage video.
Did they tell you that now your family's lives depend on your unquestioning obedience, Reince?

Blink once for yes, twice for no.

stickler said...

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Robt said...

Reince Priebus Doesn't 'Regret' Not Mentioning 'Jews' In Holocaust Statement---
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You see, When the Preb. has his fellow GOP invite Netanyahu to the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives to bad mouth our sitting President. Well, you made pals.
When the GOP shuts down Gov't over budgets and debt that economically suppresses American economics but are in favor of finding $30 billion in cash to pay Netanyahu's wages as Prime Minister of Israel.

I guess the Netanyahu may have reached the financial self aggrandizing point that supersedes his concern of his country.

We will not see any returns on this free money. Extra American cash from the White House couch cushions.

I came to a conclusion some time ago. Based on Republican behavior.
The GOP doesn't think this. They do not believe this, they KNOW that only republicans are allowed to govern this country.

It has nothing to do with the vote of the american people. Unless of course it is the Alternative American people.
If you have caught the ballot measure passed in Dakota. How the republican majority in the state legislature is about to declare state emergency to over ride the most direct voice of the people in the state. On their election reforms.

You should look it up.

Robt said...

I would add from the list of hewey comments posts.

Odd how he finds a way to agree with Trump.
When he is extreme and writing Pres Exec Orders like a dictator (he did speak of Obama that way on Exec Orders).
When Trump does follow through and measure up as with his Mexican deporting rite of passage. hewey speaks of how beautiful it is to see Trump moderate.?

But Hewey was pounding his meat over deporting every last brownie.

I can't thank the MSNBC enough for Hewey......

Where are the MSNBC commercials for Hewey by Tweetie?
Where he tells us to give Hewey a chance that he never will give Obama of anyone else.
That he knows and likes Hewey and thinks he will be interesting and do a good job for the MSNBCC.

Hewey is so predictable. As Rushbo, the Chem trails guy, et al. I don't have to watch them or listen because they have been repeating the propaganda over and over, You know to catapult it (at us).