"You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you."
-- Ray Bradbury, writer
Judge Approves $25 Million Settlement Of Trump University LawsuitA federal judge has approved a $25 million settlement deal between President Trump and students who paid for Trump University real estate seminars, bringing lengthy litigation to a close.The deal, which calls for Trump to reimburse the students who say they were defrauded, was struck in November but needed approval from U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel. He signed off on the settlement Friday in San Diego.Trump doesn't admit any wrongdoing under the terms of the settlement....You may recall that on the campaign trail, Trump accused Curiel of being biased because he is "Mexican." That claim was false — Curiel was born in Indiana — and even House Speaker Paul Ryan acknowledged that it was "sort of like the textbook definition of racism."...
oh you glorious delusional preening knuckleheads pic.twitter.com/NPs8CPUKEJ— (((Jeff Tiedrich))) (@jefftiedrich) March 31, 2017
Albedo is a measure for reflectance or optical brightness (Latin albedo, "whiteness").
We have words and emotional instincts about what feels right and wrong, but no settled criteria to help us think, argue and decide.Sure we do.
Secular philosophies that grew out of the Enlightenment have fallen apart.No they haven't. For the last 30 years they have been taking a shit-ton of incoming fire from the ghouls and con men who run Mr. Brooks' Republican party, but the fundamentals of the Enlightenment aren't going anywhere.
We haven’t entered the age of milquetoast bourgeois relativism. Instead, society has become a free-form demolition derby of moral confrontation: the cold-eyed fanaticism of students at Middlebury College and other campuses nationwide; the rage of the alt-right; holy wars over transgender bathrooms; the furious intensity at every town-hall meeting on every subject.Got that?
We’re living in an age of great moral pressure, even if we lack the words to articulate it.We don't lack the words, Mr. Brooks. We have plenty of world. Millions of words. I myself have 12 year's worth of words piled up om this little blog. Sure a lot of them are "fuck", but there are ten dollar college words in there as well. Picture too, at no additional charge.
And yet we have no clear framework or set of rituals to guide us in our quest for goodness. Worse, people have a sense of guilt and sin, but no longer a sense that they live in a loving universe marked by divine mercy, grace and forgiveness. There is sin but no formula for redemption.So where the hell does David Brooks get off speaking for "we" and "people"? Because if Mr, Brooks' long career has demonstrated one fact beyond dispute it's that he hasn't the first fucking clue what anyone outside of his tiny, cloistered world thinks about anything. No, this reeks of a middle-aged man projecting his own, immeasurable guilt onto the rest of the world. Guilt over moralizing for years about God and Marriage and Family even as he was dumping his wife to take up with his young assistant. Guilt over spending his entire career paving the way for the monster that now occupies the White House. Guilt which Mr. David Brooks is too morally polluted to admit, so "we" get one more sermon on "our" collective naughty behavior.
We see events through the lens of moral Marxism, as a class or ethnic struggle between the evil oppressor and the supposedly innocent oppressed. The moral narrative of colonialism is applied to every situation. The concept of inherited sin is back in common currency, only these days we call it “privilege.”And even more Both Siderism!
As the political scientist Thomas U. Berger put it, “We live in an age of apology and recrimination.” The conflicts on campus take on a Salem witch trial intensity. In the Middle East, the Israelis and the Palestinians compete for the victimhood narrative. Even America’s heartland populists see themselves as the victims of the oppressive coastal elites. Steve Bannon is the Frantz Fanon of the whites.And then Mr. Brooks sticks the landing with a final, steaming pile of his barely-sublimated guilt:
I notice some schools and prisons have restorative justice programs to welcome offenders back into the community. They tend to be more substantive than the cheap grace of instant forgiveness. I wonder if the wider society needs procedures like that, so the private guilt everybody feels isn’t transmuted into a public state of perpetual moral war.This from a man who has made his fortune trafficking in the cheap grace of Whig fan fiction and Both Siderist fairy tales. Because, as one cold-eyed Liberal fanatic put it a couple of years ago...
...it is not merely a boo-boo or two or a misstep or two from which Mr. Brooks is trying to separate himself: he is seeking to annul thirty years of well-documented facts.
He is filing for divorce from his own past, and factual reality does not grant such requests.And so, like Henry VIII, Mr. Brooks has had to invent a brand new church which would grant his divorce. A church from which history and causality have been excommunicated in favor of cheerful fairy tales. (from Mr. Brooks today, "Goodness and Power")...Maybe once upon a time there was an environment in which ruthless Machiavellians had room to work their dark arts, but we don’t live in Renaissance Italy. We live in a world of universal media attention. Once there is a hint of scandal of any kind, the political world goes into maximum frenzy and everything stops.We live in a world in which power is dispersed. You can’t intimidate people by chopping your enemies to bits in the town square. Even the presidency isn’t a powerful enough office to allow a leader to rule by fear. You have to build coalitions by appealing to people’s self-interest and by luring them voluntarily to your side.Modern politics, like private morality, is about building trust and enduring personal relationships. That means being fair, empathetic, honest and trustworthy. If you stink at establishing trust, you stink at politics.Three words: Bengahaaazi!Bengahaaazi!Bengahaaazi!Also death panels and birth certificates.Also Vince Foster and "It's been pretty well confirmed..."
Also a thousand other very real atrocities which Mr. Brooks' Conservatism has committed against the common good but which have been exiled from Mr. Brooks' new church for unrepentant cowards and con men: a church which purloins the language of morality and humility from honorable faiths in order to cobble together an infinitely flexible dogma of ouchless redemption without confession or atonement for Mr. Brooks and the rest of our loathsome media elect.The Church of Lyin'tology.
With the passage of time, it can become easy to forget what a hollow, craven shit-heel Holy Joe Lieberman really is. For example, here are just a few of his greatest hits from years gone by (for good measure, here is a link to a dramatic recreation of the moment when Holy Joe went out of his way to stab the Gore 2000 campaign in the back (embedding disabled on video.)
Combining the cartoonishly greasy fake piety of the lowest god bothering Elmer Gantry with the moral compass of a bus station pickpocket, Lieberman has become famous as the ambulatory embodiment the Beltway Both Siderist's Id...
Democrats Manchin, Heitkamp to back Gorsuch nomination
Two Democratic Senators Voted for Climate Denial TodayJoe Manchin and Heidi Heitkamp flash Scott Pruitt the green light.
@ron_fournier How can you look at that budget or healthcare proposal and think there is a middle ground.....false equivelance— brian doherty (@bwdoherty) March 30, 2017
The Contributors with Ann Coulter and Laura Ingraham
Alan Keyes Is Making Sense with Alan Keyes
Buchanan & Press with Pat Buchanan
The Savage Nation with Michael Savage
Scarborough Country with Joe Scarborough
Jesse Ventura's America with Jesse Venture
The Situation with Tucker Carlson
This Is a Master Class in How Not to Conduct an InterviewFeaturing Professor Chuck Todd....On his afternoon Meet The Press, my man Chuck Todd hosted Tom DeLay, the former thug who once held considerable power in the House of Representatives and was present at the creation of the epidemic of gerrymandering and voter dilution that has spread across the nation. DeLay has a new book-like product to plug and, as appalling as it may be to anyone who was conscious during the 1990s, Chuck urged DeLay to reminisce about the golden era of legislative genius over which he presided...
Some times Mr. President the truth is a very difficult thing to accept. I would suggest self-reflection. It worked for me. https://t.co/sn0DAQd8Zd— Matthew Dowd (@matthewjdowd) March 29, 2017
If you care about politics and this country, stop what you're doing a buy this book via @matthewjdowd https://t.co/89HQrzRmj7— Ron Fournier (@ron_fournier) March 27, 2017
If the people of our great country could only see how viciously and inaccurately my administration is covered by certain media!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 29, 2017
Remember when the failing @nytimes apologized to its subscribers, right after the election, because their coverage was so wrong. Now worse!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 29, 2017
By and large, the rule for Conservatives who live on the wingnut-welfare teat is, when they publicly step on their own dicks spectacularly enough to displease the money guys, the Gingrich Rules kick in: 30 days on the bench, after which they are reintroduced back to the media ecosystem via some "legit" format during which no mention whatsoever will be made of what got them on bad paper with the network in the first place.
Steve King, who two weeks ago was defending nationalist racial purity, is now back on CNN as a standard House GOP caucus surrogate.— Ned Resnikoff (@resnikoff) March 28, 2017
Racist Bill O'Reilly says black congresswoman isn't worth listening to because he doesn't like her wig: pic.twitter.com/31fBHB9P76— Millennial Democrats (@Millennial_Dems) March 28, 2017
.@angela_rye But u are way wrong. Obama's blackness protected him. Liberal white guilt wouldn't allow criticism. He was held to a lower bar. https://t.co/RHg0bKrCp2— Joe Walsh (@WalshFreedom) March 28, 2017
.@angela_rye But u are way wrong. Obama's blackness protected him. Liberal white guilt wouldn't allow criticism. He was held to a lower bar. https://t.co/RHg0bKrCp2— Joe Walsh (@WalshFreedom) March 28, 2017
...One of the features of living in Washington is that one is rarely unmindful of humanity’s capacity to disappoint. I’ve long tried to be an optimist in these matters — because Washington contains plenty of individuals who are genuinely devoting their lives to the common good. (I swear. I know many of them, on both sides.) But watching previously rock-ribbed conservatives slowly give in to the pull of utter expediency these past few months has been a truly deflating experience. The grossest are those like Stephen Moore (or Mike Pence!), who were for decades a near-parody of ideological purism, and yet overnight saw the populist light.But the lamest of the enablers are the anti-anti-Trumpers, those conservatives who know full well the depravity of this president, and yet focus on his opponents (I’m looking at you, National Review, with a few honorable exceptions). So much hysteria, these knowing right-wingers sigh. Ignore the character flaws, they urge...
But there have also been Republican writers who have bravely and clearly stood their ground. Avik Roy risked a lot to come out against Ryancare. Reihan Salam and Ross Douthat have not wavered from their prescient belief in reforming the GOP, while keeping Trump at a clear, distinct distance. My friend David Frum has had a real moment. George Will has been fired by Fox. David Brooks hasn’t caved. I even find myself in the odd position of being smack-bang at Bill Kristol’s side as he resists. Super-neocon Eliot Cohen has pulled no punches. Jen Rubin at the Washington Post is on a roll. Rod Dreher at The American Conservative believes the whole world is ending, but he still won’t acquiesce to Trump. Ditto Daniel Larison on foreign policy. David French, however, deserves a minor medal for this moment of dissent in National Review...
The Late-Repentant includes (1) those too lazy or too preoccupied to repent (the Indolent), (2) those who repented at the last minute without formally receiving last rites, as a result of violent deaths, and (3) the Negligent Rulers. These souls will be admitted to Purgatory thanks to their genuine repentance, but must wait outside for an amount of time equal to their lives on earth.
I opposed Obamacare. I like health savings accounts, tax credits and competitive health care markets to drive down costs. But these free-market reforms have to be funded in a way to serve the least among us, not the most. This House Republican plan would increase suffering, morbidity and death among the middle class and poor in order to provide tax cuts to the rich.It would cut Medicaid benefits by $880 billion between now and 2026. It would boost the after-tax income for those making more than $1 million a year by 14 percent, according to the Tax Policy Center. This bill takes the most vicious progressive stereotypes about conservatives and validates them.
Can Elephants Learn From Failure?
By the time legislation is crafted, probably in early summer, the good basic framework could transmogrify into something completely ugly — a bill that explodes the national debt while handing massive benefits to the rich. Then we’d be back where we were with health care reform, with a bill that benefits very few and which no one likes.
Tax reform probably won’t survive if the Republicans try to do it the way they tried to do health care — staying within the lines of Republican orthodoxy while veering over to the extreme right in the hopes of winning the Freedom Caucus. Tax reform will probably only pass with bipartisan buy-in, if there are enough potential yes votes that you can afford to lose some off on the extremes.
Tax reform is one of the few issues where Republican and Democratic thinking overlaps. It’s one of the few ways to significantly boost growth. If Republicans can learn from their errors, they can get this done. If, on the other hand, tax reform fails, the G.O.P. majority is forfeit and Washington will descend to utter dysfunction.
I don't know about you, but if your "Once again, Liberals were right about the Right all along" file is getting as vast as mine, we're all going to have to start investing in warehouse space, forklifts, and OSHA certifications sooner rather than later.Trump’s TrainwreckFor seven years — seven years — Republicans thundered about the evils of Obamacare, yearned for the day when they could bury it and vowed to do precisely that once the ball was in their hands.Last week proved that this had all been an emotional and theatrical exercise, not a substantive one. The ball was in their hands, and they had no coherent playbook. No real play. They scurried around the Capitol with their chests deflated and their tails between their legs.For the entirety of his campaign, Donald Trump crowed about his peerless ability to make deals, one of which, he assured us, was going to be a replacement for Obamacare that would cut costs without leaving any Americans in the lurch.Last week proved that there was no such swap, that he hadn’t done an iota of work to devise one and that he was spectacularly unprepared to shepherd such legislation through Congress. As his promise lay in tatters at his feet, he gave a delusional interview to Time magazine about what an infallible soothsayer he is, then tried to shift the blame to Democrats, who, he said, would soon be the ones hankering for an Obamacare replacement....
CHUCK TODD: Welcome back, panel is here. Tom Brokaw, Grand Poobah of NBC News here. Eliana Johnson of Politico, Joy Reid, host of MSNBC's AM Joy, and always a joy to have you here. And Hugh Hewitt, host on the Salem Radio Network. Alright, Hugh. I'm gonna start with you because this is what the Washington Examiner headline is: GOP Cave on Obamacare Repeal is the Biggest Broken Promise in Political History, was the top of, I believe, Phil Klein's, analysis. Is he right?HUGH HEWITT: No, it's overstated. We had a very good week with Neil Gorsuch, he's going to change the balance of the Supreme Court for 30 years and so President Trump has a huge win to put on the table this week. It was a big loss, but I agree with the autopsy that Director Mulvaney just put out there - that loss isn't on the president, it isn't on Paul Ryan...
CHUCK TODD: Charlie Dent said that, Hugh. He basically said this was just all about trying to finance a $2 trillion tax cut hoping that they could make it deficit neutral.HUGH HEWITT: Charlie, who is a friend of mine, lives in a marginal district. He has to be very careful with every vote. The half of the Freedom Caucus that killed this live in very safe, red districts. Obamacare is the timeshare that the Democrats bought that they cannot admit the cost of, that they keep telling themselves was a good idea. It is in a death spiral. Joy and I have had--JOY-ANN REID: Is not.HUGH HEWITT: --many disagreements about that. But it is in a death spiral.JOY-ANN REID: It is not.CHUCK TODD: It's not the definition of an economic death spiral yet.HUGH HEWITT: The New York Times yesterday pointed out that there are, and the president of Aetna, that you will lose coverage in many places in America for everyone. And that is, to me, a death spiral for those people. Joy disagrees. I know she should jump in here.JOY-ANN REID: Yes, yes.CHUCK TODD: She wants to, but I appreciate her reticence.JOY-ANN REID: And let's not take Aetna's word for it. Because we know that Aetna lied. We had already a federal judge say that they lied. Aetna wanted to do a merger with Humana. They were told no. They pulled out for other reasons. Insurance companies raise premiums. It's what they do. That's what they're in business to do. But the Congressional Budget Office made it quite clear the Affordable Care Act is not, not collapsing, not in a death spiral, just not.CHUCK TODD: I want to quickly get to Paul Ryan here...
Judge Jeanine Calls For Paul Ryan To Quit — Hours After Trump Plugged Her Show!
“How could you possibly misjudge this?”
Can Pres. Trump get back on track? @alexcast, @matthewjdowd, @maggieNYT, and @jonkarl join me on the @ThisWeekABC roundtable Sunday.
— GeorgeStephanopoulos (@GStephanopoulos) March 26, 2017
And, for good measure......“The beauty,” Trump continued, “is that they own Obamacare. So when it explodes, they come to us, and we make one beautiful deal for the people.”My question for the president: Are you really willing to wait to reengage on health care until the Democrats come and ask for your help?“Sure,” Trump said. “I never said I was going to repeal and replace in the first 61 days” — contradicting his own statements and that of his own adviser, Kellyanne Conway, who told CNN in November that the then-president-elect was contemplating convening a special session on Inauguration Day to begin the process of repealing the Affordable Care Act...
We will immediately repeal and replace ObamaCare - and nobody can do that like me. We will save $'s and have much better healthcare!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 9, 2016
Now both parties have failed to craft health care reform commanding broad public support. Leave me out of debate over whose failure is worse https://t.co/WCxA7VKyie— Ron Fournier (@ron_fournier) March 23, 2017
Democratic president blames Republicans
— Ron Fournier (@ron_fournier) March 25, 2017
Republican president blames Democrats
We need a third (or so) way. @matthewjdowd https://t.co/Dp1b29bq7p
"If your opponent is of choleric temper, irritate him."
-- Sun Tzu
Trump is publicly silent because he doesn't know policy well & is lowering expectations in case he fails. CALL 202-225-3121 #KillTheBill— (((sfpelosi))) (@sfpelosi) March 24, 2017
Let the name of Obama be stricken from every book and tablet, stricken from all pylons and obelisks, stricken from every monument of Egypt. Let the name of Obama be unheard and unspoken, erased from the memory of men for all time.
The important thing to remember is that almost everyone in the House majority is motivated by an ideological commitment bordering on a religious fervor that the involvement of government in things like health insurance is fundamentally illegitimate. That isn't going to change no matter what happens in Congress on Friday, and the idea of the United States joining the rest of the industrialized world in offering most of its citizens a decent, uncomplicated healthcare system will continue to be in peril until that faith is abandoned. Nobody involved in this debate is good enough to make that happen.
"We’re going to have great health care at a fraction of the cost, and you watch. It’ll happen.” -- Il Douche, October 2016
— Women's March (@womensmarch) March 23, 2017
The Democrats missed their chance to shape healthcare and let the Freedom Caucus be the key swing actor. Time to get off the sidelines.— No Labels (@NoLabelsOrg) March 23, 2017
Dead CenterPolitical Cowardice Now Has Its Own "Movement"!Yay!In case you ever idled away an afternoon screwing around with your old political chemistry set/fantasy football league lineups and wondering what would happen if you took a bunch of Republican primary losers (Charlie Christ)...added in a goonbag of out-of-work and out-of-favor former Republican speechwriters and campaign button-men (David Frum/John Avlon/Mark McKinnon)...the last of the politically arteriosclerotic insider DLC goofs who aren't already drawing paychecks under the Obama Administration's "Former Clinton White House Full Employment Project" (Nancy Jacobson aka. Mrs. Mark Penn)...Republican minor teevee celebrities (Joey Joe Joe Junior Scarborough)......and David Fucking Brooks?And then sprinkled the resulting crime against nature with an assload of money (because there are always, always endless assloads of money available for any horrible idea that reinforces Villager sensibilities)?What you get crawling out of the Petri dish are things like the autotuned, content-free, sugar-coma-inducing horror that is the "No Labels Anthem"But nothing we did not expect, right?...
...Peter Stockmann. —for his own family, as I was saying, as well as for the town he lives in.Dr. Stockmann. It is I who have the real good of the town at heart! I want to lay bare the defects that sooner or later must come to the light of day. I will show whether I love my native town.Peter Stockmann. You, who in your blind obstinacy want to cut off the most important source of the town's welfare?Dr. Stockmann. The source is poisoned, man! Are you mad? We are making our living by retailing filth and corruption! The whole of our flourishing municipal life derives its sustenance from a lie!Peter Stockmann. All imagination—or something even worse. The man who can throw out such offensive insinuations about his native town must be an enemy to our community.
Once again, the media is slowly being dragged kicking and screaming to the place Liberals have been all along.
And once again, no matter how much our analysis is vindicated, they will go right on pretending we do not exist.
